Uzbekistan | The sitting President of Uzbekistan has an extended term until 2030

of Uzbekistan president Shavkat Mirziyoyev held on to power after declaring a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election on Sunday. According to the preliminary results, Mirziyoyev received 87 percent of the votes.

There were three quite unknown candidates against him, and the elections were not democratic.

The election lacked real political competition despite reform efforts, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) election observation mission said in a statement.

This is Mirziyoyev’s third season. He has ruled Uzbekistan since 2016. Earlier this year, a referendum was held in which Mirziyoyev was given the chance to extend the presidency for two more terms. In addition, the president’s term of office was extended from five to seven years, meaning he could remain in power until 2037.

The 65-year-old Mirziyoyev has promised to open Uzbekistan to foreign investment and tourism and implement key domestic reforms. Trained as an engineer, Mirziyoyev describes himself as a reformer who will create a “new Uzbekistan”. He has said that he wants to double his country’s gross national product to 146 billion euros.

Mirziyoyev has ended forced labor in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan and freed his predecessor, the autocrat Islam Karimov political prisoners imprisoned during the quarter-century regime.

According to NGOs, the country’s human rights situation has improved, but there is still much to improve. The authorities have also shown no signs of allowing a real opposition to emerge.

With a total of 35 million inhabitants, Muslim-majority Uzbekistan is the most populous country in Central Asia.