Preliminary results show nationalist Sadyr Japarov, 52, won almost 80 percent of the vote, avoiding a runoff.
Nationalist politician Sadyr Japarov is on course to a landslide victory in Kyrgyzstan’s snap presidential election, which was triggered by the collapse of the previous government.
Japarov won almost 80 percent of the vote on Sunday in the Central Asian nation which is closely allied with Russia, according to preliminary results cited by Kyrgyzstan’s Central Election Commission, meaning there will be no runoff.
The data meanwhile showed his closest competitor trailing with less than 7 percent.
“I am assuming power at a time of hardship and crisis,” Japarov told reporters after the results were announced.
“One or two years will not be enough to fix everything, we can do it in three or four years and it will require stability.”
More than 80 percent of voters have also supported a proposal to reform the constitution to give the president greater powers at parliament’s expense, the commission said.
Just more than 10 percent supported the parliamentarian rule.
The referendum vote spells the end for a mixed political system adopted in 2010 to tame authoritarianism after two successive strongman presidents were ejected from power during street protests.
Violent protests which erupted last October sprung Japarov, 52, from jail to the prime minister’s chair and culminated in him assuming the interim presidency before he ran for the full-time role.
Japarov, who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term for kidnapping a provincial governor as part of a protest, had his verdict quashed amid the October unrest and has outspent 16 presidential poll rivals by a wide margin.Aljazeera
