Emerging Europe this week
Central Europe
Doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine that triggered a political crisis and the resignation of the prime minister in
Slovakia should not be administered yet because of incomplete or inaccurate information from the manufacturer, the country’s national medicines agency said this week. The Dennik N news site quoted the agency as saying it could not properly assess the shots, which it said were different from the vaccine whose favourable peer-reviewed late-stage trial results were published in The Lancet medical journal in February. The Slovakian president, Zuzana Čaputová, last week named Eduard Heger as prime minister after his predecessor, Igor Matovič resigned over his secret purchase of the Russian vaccines.
Uzbekistan: Opposition Erk Party wants in on October presidential election vestnikkavkaza.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from vestnikkavkaza.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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The Erk (Freedom) Party says it will nominate a candidate to run in Uzbekistan’s October 24 presidential election.
Erk was technically Uzbekistan’s first registered political party having been founded in 1990, it filed its registration papers with the Justice Ministry just two days after Uzbekistan declared independence in 1991. But the ensuing years saw the party’s leaders harassed, arrested, and fled into exile; the party was not reregistered and lingers in legal limbo, still.
The last time an Uzbek president faced a serious challenger, one seen as legitimate rather than a Potemkin candidate, was in 1991. In that election, Islam Karimov who had become president of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic the previous year faced off against Muhammad Solih, a poet and the founder of Erk. The contest, viewed as heavily rigged in Karimov’s favor, was the only time Karimov took less than 90 percent of the vote in the final count.
Erk, Uzbekistan s First Opposition Party, Says It Will Attempt To Field A Presidential Candidate
April 06, 2021 12:05 GMT
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TASHKENT Uzbekistan s Erk (Freedom) Party, which was banned in the 1990s and its leader forced out of the country and his associates jailed, says it plans to try to field a candidate for president in the election later this year.
According to a party statement on April 5, two members of the party, Salovat Umrzoqov and Jahongir Otajonov, have officially expressed their intentions to try to become the party s candidate for the vote.
It added that the party s Central Committee will decide later which of the candidates will be officially nominated for the poll that is scheduled for October 24.