Nine contestants vie for presidency in one-man race
ASHGABAT: Citizens of Turkmenistan went to the polls yesterday for a presidential vote expected to further tighten incumbent strongman Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s hold over the gas-rich Central Asian country.
Mr Berdymukhamedov, 59, faces eight other candidates including subordinate regional officials, the director of a government-owned oil refinery and a representative of the Central Asian country’s state agribusiness complex. But these other men are viewed as token opponents for the former dentist and health minister who rose to power suddenly following the shock death of predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, in 2006.
“Out of the nine I only know and understand the current president,” Aiperi Tashliyeva, a 48-year-old housewife living in the capital, Ashgabat, said. “I do not know on what merits or for what reasons the others became candidates. Therefore, I will vote for Berdymukhamedov.”
Recent footage from state television saw Mr Berdymukhamedov in relaxed form during a low-key pre-election campaign. One of his public appearances showed him decked in casual attire as he impressed factory workers by strumming along on the guitar to a song state media claims he wrote himself.
The grand pledge at the centre of his campaign is to “ensure the prosperity of independent, neutral Turkmenistan in the third millennium”.
One-sided votes are typical in Central Asia, a Muslim-majority ex-Soviet region politically close to Russia and China, where reigning presidents are usually expected to die in power.
The ballot in Turkmenistan comes after Mr Berdymukhamedov signed off on constitutional changes that analysts saw as removing barriers to his lifelong rule.
That fix extended presidential terms from five to seven years and abandoned the upper age limit for candidates.
“These regimes have a logic of their own and they very much follow that logic,” said Annette Bohr, an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House think tank.
If anything, Ms Bohr said, Turkmenistan’s regime is “even more repressive and personalist” than those found in neighbouring Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
“Berdymukhamedov is predictable in that he will do what he has to do in order to perpetuate that regime,” Ms Bohr said.
Like Turkmenistan’s first president, Niyazov, who died of a reported heart attack aged 66, Mr Berdymukhamedov has presided over a flowering leadership cult that draws comparisons with the likes of North Korea.
Both men are honoured by golden statues in Ashgabat, where natural gas wealth is flaunted in lavish, grandiose white marble architecture, even as other parts of the country suffer poverty.
In a February pre-election brief, New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Mr Berdymukhamedov has taken “a few modest steps to reverse some of Niyazov’s damaging policies” while retaining the state’s repressive character.
Although citizens now have access to the internet, unlike under Niyazov, it is tightly controlled, and the government “has waged a campaign” to cut citizens off from foreign satellite television, according to HRW.
Ahead of the vote, “voters cannot express their views about all candidates in an open manner and without fear”, the group noted.
Although Turkmenistan sits on the world’s fourth largest natural gas reserves, it has failed to diversify its economy and remains heavily reliant on exports to China.