Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has been re-elected President of Turkmenistan for another term with a landslide majority of 97 percent votes, the Central Asian country's election officials announced on Monday.
A trained dentist, Berdymukhamedov, 54, also holds the posts of Prime Minister, commander of the armed forces and chair of the energy-rich former Soviet republic's only political party.
As the results shows, he faced no serious challenge from the seven opponents in Sunday's election. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had declined to send an observer mission after criticizing the lack of democratic freedoms, media reports said.
Turkmenistan, a Muslim-majority country of 5.5 million, is ranked among the world's most repressive states.
Berdymukhamedov had promised political reforms when he won the last election in 2007 with 89 percent votes following the death of Saparmurat Niyazov, the nation's first post-Soviet leader.
"There is no private or independent electronic media and publication of the first private newspaper was permitted only recently," the OSCE office for democratic institutions and human rights said in a report after an assessment mission in December.
"The political space has been characterized by an absence of political parties other than the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, an insufficient separation of powers between different branches of government and a limited respect for basic human rights and fundamental freedoms," the group said.
The desert nation has the world's fourth largest natural gas reserves and has signed billion dollar deals with China.
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