Ashgabat (AsiaNews/Agencies) - According to the official figures, 90% of Turkmen went to the ballot box yesterday to elect the 125 members of the new parliament, as provided in the new constitution approved in September. Now the government has 10 days to announce the results, although many claim that the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

The government speaks of "a milestone" in the democratic reform of the country. But the critics are observing that most of the 288 candidates are members of the party of President Kurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the only official party, in addition to a handful of "independent" candidates who needed government "authorization" in order to run. The independents maintain that nothing has changed since the regime of the previous president, Saparmurat Niyazov.

Teacher and journalist Sazak Durdymuradov explains that becoming a candidate seems easy: all one needs are 10 signatures of support. But his candidacy was rejected "for unexplained reasons." He explains that there has never been a real electoral campaign: "no posters, no assemblies," "no information from the state media," just a few days before the voting, the names of the candidates were still unknown.

Local sources explain that two or three days before the voting, the police go from house to house telling the people to go vote on Sunday morning: the people are afraid of the police, so everyone goes to vote.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has sent just a few experts, because it believes that effective monitoring is impossible. Permits for the foreign press have been limited, and Oguljamal Yazliyeva, the local director of Radio Free Europe, says that "the authorities are restricting the work of our correspondents and contributors by cutting off their telephones and monitoring their every move."