Tajik voters overwhelmingly approve constitutional amendments banning religious parties, abolishing term limits

<div class="dateline-storybody"><div class="clearfix" id="story-target"><div id="content-body-16194797-79227282"><p>People in the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan have voted overwhelmingly to approve changes to the Constitution allowing the longtime authoritarian president to rule indefinitely, election officials said Monday.</p><p>An initial count showed 94.5 percent of voters had supported amendments that included a provision to scrap presidential term limits.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 20.4px;">The referendum was held Sunday with only cursory international scrutiny. No election in Tajikistan has ever been deemed free and fair by the most thorough international vote-monitoring organizations.</span></p>
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