Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev won a second term with an overwhelming majority of the vote in the Central Asian country's presidential election, showed preliminary results from the Central Election Commission on Friday.

The latest results, based on returns from 1,499 of the 2,330 polling stations, showed that Bakiyev gained more than 86 percent of the votes counted, or over 50 percent of the votes casted.

Under the constitution, the candidate gaining more than 50 percent of the poll in a valid first round will be the winner.

Bakiyev's main opposition challenger, Almazbek Atambayev, garnered only 7. 4 percent of the votes. Other four candidates won no more than 4 percent in total.

Hours before the polls closed on Thursday, Atambayev, together with independent candidate Zhenishbek Nazaraliyev, decided to pull out of the election which they said was "illegitimate." But legal issues prevented them from officially withdrawing.

Kyrgyzstan held on Thursday its fifth general election since the former Soviet repulic's independence in 1991.

More than 500 international observers from 48 countries, mainly the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and over 10,000 local observers monitored the election.

Sergei Lebedev, head of the CIS observer mission, said Friday in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek that the polls were free, open and in compliance with the country's laws.

However, OSCE observers said the vote was marred by a number of irregularities.

It failed to meet "key standards Kyrgyzstan has committed to as a participating country of the OSCE," Consiglio Di Nino, head of the OSCE delegation, told a press conference on Friday.

(Xinhua News Agency July 24, 2009)