Nationalist politician Sadyr Japarov won a landslide victory on Sunday in Kyrgyzstan’s snap presidential election, which was triggered by the collapse of the previous government, Reuters reported.
Japarov has won almost 80 per cent of the vote in the Central Asian nation which is closely allied withRussia, preliminary results cited by Kyrgyzstan’s Central Election Commission showed, meaning there will be no run-off.
More than 80 per cent of voters have also supported a proposal to reform the constitution to give the president greater powers at parliament’s expense, the commission said.
Violent protests which erupted last October sprang Japarov, 52, from jail to the prime minister’s chair and culminated in him assuming the interim presidency before he ran for the full-time role.
Japarov, who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term for kidnapping a provincial governor as part of a protest, had his verdict quashed amid the October unrest and has outspent 16 presidential poll rivals by a wide margin.
Despite his nationalist stance – Japarov’s first act as prime minister was to add ethnicity information to national ID cards – he has repeatedly pledged to maintain a close relationship with former Soviet overlord Moscow.
“Russia is our strategic partner,” Japarov said after casting his ballot in a suburb of capital Bishkek, and urged all groups to accept the results to preserve stability.
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