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Sooronbay Jeenbekov officially becomes Kyrgyz president

Kyrgyzstan’s Central Commission for Elections and Referendums has officially declared Sooronbay Jeenbekov the winner of the October 15 presidential election

BISHKEK, October 30. /TASSS/. Kyrgyzstan’s Central Commission for Elections and Referendums (CCER) has officially declared Sooronbay Jeenbekov the winner of the October 15 presidential election, the committee’s general department reported on Monday.

"Vote counting protocols from all polling stations were received and processed, and probes into all election-related complaints and applications were completed," the commission noted. All CCER members will sign the final document after the voting outcome is officially released, and it will come then into effect. The inauguration ceremony for elected president Jeenbekov will be held within 30 calendar days from this moment according to the law, the CCER explained.

The election commission also reiterated that the voting results at eight republican election polls were declared invalid and abolished due to multiple violations. "This decision was chiefly prompted by discrepancy in the number of voters provided by automatic readers (optical scan voting systems) and by protocols for hand-counted paper ballots ," the election commission explained.

Eleven candidates ran for Kyrgyz presidency. About 1.7 mln out of 3.025 mln enlisted citizens took part in the voting. The Social Democratic Party’s candidate Sooronbay Jeenbekov was backed by less than 55% of voters. He was followed by leader of the Respublika-Ata-Jurt (Republic - Homeland) parliamentary faction Omurbek Babanov, who received 33% of votes. The other candidates lagged behind.

On the election day, 2,375 election stations were operating in Kyrgyzstan and outside it, all of them having optical scan voting systems and biometric voter registration to prevent electoral fraud. Almost all international observers, including from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), admitted that the Kyrgyz presidential election was clear, open and just and that the insignificant violations revealed by them could not affect the voting outcome.