Today I went voting as many other Tajik citizens. As long as I am out of Tajikistan I went to the nearest embassy to give my vote to one of the candidates.

It was the first time I went to the poll, though I have this right for many years. I always thought that voting in our country is always unfair and one vote less or more will not change anything. However, this year I decided to go.

The embassy is far away from my office, so I asked my friend to give me a ride. Actually, he was also going to vote. On our way to the embassy he said that we need to get another Tajik guy who also wanted to vote. When we met that guy it came out that he did not have his passport with him. My friend exclaimed and said that he forgot to get his passport as well and he needed to go back to his office to get it.

He decided to call to the embassy and ask whether he can vote without a passport or not. He was sure that they will let him because people in the embassy know him very well. However the man that he was talking to, said that it is not possible, because there were a lot of observers from different international organizations.

It was half on our way to the embassy. Then we went back to his office and the other guy went home, both of them got their passports and we went to the embassy. Finally we got to the embassy, which was far from the main road and we had to go through many little streets.

In the embassy, first we met the guard, they checked us and we went to the place where we were supposed to vote. There was playing a Tajik music, and when we approached the poll- room one woman came out and asked us to wait. We waited for several minutes and finally there came two men, greeted us and asked to enter the polling room. We entered the room and it came out that they were the chair of election committee and the member of election committee. No one was inside the room before that, except the woman.

I received the bulletin, to my surprise, it was not the original copy but the хeroxed one. The chair of the committee asked me to leave only one candidate and blue-pencil the others. I could hardly read the names of the candidates. There was a bad xeroxed copy. I’m not sure but I think there were supposed to be other bulletins, the original copies. I guess the same is happening in many other places. Probably Alexander can say something about that.

I did not see the observers but when I voted and I went out of the room I saw them. They came out of the other room where they had lunch, I guess. They greeted us as the voters, congratulated us and went away.

Outside the territory of the embassy came up a journalist Radio “Ozodi” (Liberty) and interviewed my friend.

Tomorrow we will know the name of our president who is going to rule for seven years.