Tajiks start voting in parliamentary elections

Tajik voters went to the polls Saturday morning to choose 63 new members of the lower house of parliament, Xinhua reported.
   Polling stations opened at 6:00 a.m. local time (midnight GMT) and will  close 12 hours later, with election results starting to come out three hours after that.
   There are 217 candidates standing in the race for the 63 seats of the lower house. However, the election is expected to further cement President Emomali Rakhmon's power, whose ruling Democratic People's Party holds 57 seats of the lower house and has dominated the election campaign.
   Little excitement is seen in the poll as most results are predictable. People's attention is focused on Rakhmon's 23-year-old son, a professional footballer with little experience, who is running for a seat on Dushanbe's city council, first step in his political pursuit.