An Uzbek woman casts her ballot at a polling place during the presidential election in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on Sunday. Uzbekistan is to elect a new president after the death of Islam Karimov, who had served as head of state since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. EPA/RASHID KARAMURZAYEV POOL PHOTO (Rashid Karamurzayev/EPA)

Uzbeks went to the polls Sunday in the first election since the death of longtime autocratic leader Islam Karimov. In a sign of continuity with his quarter-century of authoritarian rule, the vote seemed to have only one possible outcome.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev, a veteran politician who has served as the nation’s prime minister since 2003, was poised to win Sunday evening, with the elections commission in the Central Asian nation of 31 million reporting more than 70 percent turnout by 5 p.m.

Mirziyoyev will become just the second president of Uzbekistan since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Karimov, who died of a stroke in September, ruled the country virtually unopposed, and often brutally, for 27 years.

Mirziyoyev emerged from a circle of Karimov’s close political confidants, and even before Sunday’s balloting appeared to have been chosen as the next president. The speaker of Uzbekistan’s senate, next in the line of presidential succession after Karimov, stepped aside to allow Mirziyoyev to become acting president until the election.

The presidential campaign was lackluster, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “All candidates refrain from criticizing the government or each other, and claim to target distinct segments of the electorate,” its report read.

Mirziyoyev has made some tentative steps to show that his rule may not be as severe as under Karimov, who jailed his political opponents and in particular cracked down on Muslim groups under the pretense of battling Islamism. In one case, he was accused of ordering several prisoners to be boiled alive.

Last month, Mirziyoyev granted amnesty to Samandar Kukanov, an Uzbek political activist who had become one of the world’s longest-held political prisoners, according to Human Rights Watch. Kukanov had been in prison since 1993.

Mirziyoyev has indicated that he may relax tensions with Uzbekistan’s neighbors and will consider economic reforms for the country’s overregulated economy.

At the same time, he is known as a harsh administrator who has been responsible for overseeing Uzbekistan’s cotton harvest, when the government mobilizes millions of Uzbek citizens to work in the fields.

Under Karimov’s rule, Uzbekistan dodged the instability that befell neighboring countries such as Tajikistan after the fall of the Soviet Union, but it ultimately receded into isolation and poverty. Karimov, who was called “Papa” for short, secured benefits from the United States in exchange for the use of an air base as a staging point for the invasion of Afghanistan.

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