The authoritarian President of Uzbekistan, Mr Islam Karimov, was heading for an overwhelming re-election victory yesterday in a poll that saw his only opponent vote for him.
Mr Karimov, a former Communist Party chief who has ruled the Central Asian nation since its independence in 1991, has denied that he hand-picked a puppet opponent to make his reelection for a new five-year term seem fair.
But all pretences were swept away when his "rival", a Marxist lecturer, Mr Abdulhasiz Dzhalalov, stepped out of the ballot booth and announced he had voted for the better man, Mr Karimov.
"I voted for stability, peace, our nation's independence and for the development of Uzbekistan," Mr Dzhalalov said. "So, paradoxical as it may sound, I voted for Islam Karimov."
Asked why he ran in the first place, Mr Dzhalalov replied: "I ran so that democracy would win."
Officials announced that more than half of the 12.1 million eligible voters in this overwhelmingly Muslim country had cast their ballots before noon, forecasting a turn-out of more than 90 per cent.
Human rights groups have bitterly criticised Mr Karimov for running a Stalinist state in which unco-operative journalists are arrested while opposition parties are simply banned or their members forced into exile. Opinion polls predicted he would win 99 per cent of the ballot.
"We will fight extremism and the expansion of Islamic terrorism," said Mr Karimov as he voted. Six Muslims sentenced to death by the Uzbek Supreme Court in June for having organised a series of explosions that killed 16 people last February were executed on Friday in the run-up to the poll.
The President has a powerful weapon to ward off all his opponents, political or otherwise, as the Uzbek constitution forbids "organised activities leading . . . to participation in anti-government organisations".
Mr Karimov, who like many fellow Central Asian rulers has never won less than 88 per cent in any poll, went to great pains to make the vote look fair. His efforts were dealt a blow when the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) shunned yesterday's ballot after witnessing a parliamentary election last month in which five propresident parties took part.
In their place, Mr Karimov shipped in 108 international observers from friendly states such as China, Russia and Moldovia, giving them all a tsar-like reception and putting them up in the city's only Western hotel.