Shavkat Mirziyoyev, long-serving prime minister of Uzbekistan, has become its second president, winning 88.61 percent of the vote in an election.
Mirziyoyev, 59, was prime minister from 2003 under Karimov, who died of a stroke in September having run Central Asia’s most populous nation with an iron fist for 27 years.
He is expected to step down as prime minister but it is unclear when, as there is no precedent for such a transition in the former Soviet republic, which became an independent state in 1991.
The landslide victory by Mirziyoyev had been widely expected. He swiftly emerged as the likely successor to Karimov and was appointed interim president when the senate speaker, given the role by constitution, gave it up in Mirziyoyev’s favour.