Turkmenistan President Re-elected with 97% of Votes

Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov Monday won a massive re-election victory with over 97 percent of votes.

Berdymukhamedov scored 97.14 percent of the votes in Sunday's election, the head of the central election commission Orazmurat Niyazliev told reporters, based on almost 97 percent of the vote counted.

"The President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov had been re-elected after winning the most votes," he said.

Seven candidates stood against the president, who took power after the death in 2006 of eccentric dictator Saparmurat Niyazov, but all were loyal members of the elite who did not sound a note of criticism in the campaign.

The second place candidate, according to the preliminary count, was Energy and Industry Minister Yarmukhammet Orazgulyev who managed to win just 1.2 percent of the votes.

Election officials hailed a national turnout of 96.7 percent, meaning that almost all of the country's electorate of just under three million has cast their votes.

"This is a great number and we are happy for this. Everyone has supported our open election," said Niyazliev.

The elections were just the third in Turkmenistan's post-Soviet history: Niyazov won a notorious ballot in 1992 in which he was the sole candidate with 99.5 percent and was then declared by parliament president for life in 1999.

Berdymukhamedov, an ex-dentist who became Niyazov's health minister after rising through the ranks of dentistry, won the last polls in 2007 with over 89 percent.

Turkmenistan's tightly-controlled state media earlier hailed the election as a historic chapter in the history of modern Turkmenistan.

"It is already possible now to say that they proceeded on a firm democratic basis and have placed a new branch in the history of the independent Turkmen state," said the government mouthpiece newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan.

State television added: "An especially lively and ceremonial atmosphere reigned at all the polling stations in the country."