TASHKENT, Uzbekistan
Islam Karimov has been re-elected the president of Uzbekistan, the country's Central Electoral Commission has announced.
Karimov garnered 90.39 percent of total votes in a presidential election where 18,942,349 people voted - a turnout of 91.08 percent of 20,798,052 eligible voters, the commission confirmed on Tuesday.
Mirza-Ulugbek Abdusalomov, the head of the commission, said at a press conference: "In this election, a total of 17,122,597 voters favored the president-elect Karimov."
People's Democratic Party Leader Hatamcan Ketmanov won 2.92 percent of the poll, while Justice Social Democratic Party leader Nariman Umarov got 2.05 percent and Akmal Saidov from the National Revival Democratic Party, received 3.08 percent, Abdusalomov said.
Independent nation
More than 400 observers from 40 countries observed the polls.
Karimov became President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic on March 24, 1990.
After Karimov declared Uzbekistan an independent nation in 1991, he won the country's first presidential election in 1991.
His tenure was extended until 2,000 and he was re-elected president.
The 76-year-old has been in power for two decades since the fall of the Soviet Union and won a further seven-year term in 2007.
Uzbekistan has a population of more than 30 million people.
