Turkmenistan: President Nominates Himself for Elections

Bohan Shen

Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov bowing to the Koran during his presidential inauguration, February 16, 2007.

Orchestrating Turkmenistan's sole state-controlled party, government-organized social movements, and labor unions as well as loyal elders and officials, President Berdymukhamedov has nominated himself as president for elections to take place February 12, 2012.

No other candidate has appeared on the scene.

At a ceremony December 15, the Turkmen leader wheeled out the state's lone Democratic Party as well as the state-run labor, women, youth and war veterans' organizations to applaud his candidacy, the opposition website gundogar.org reported, citing the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

Merd Ishangulyyev, a pensioner and local town elder, stepped forward to formally make the nomination, unanimously supported by all the other loyalists at the meeting. With every major state-controlled organization now behind the president, it's difficult to understand how even symbolically, other candidates might emerge. Any potential rivals would still theoretically have a chance if a local initiative group of citizens were formed under the law, then registered at the discretion of local officials, and finally allowed to meet -- with everyone at the meeting showing their passports.

In the 2007 elections that brought Berdymukhamedov to power, several docile alternative candidates were permitted to run as candidates. Their purpose seemed to be to articulate themes for the carefully-controlled state media previewing Berdymukhamedov's eventual reforms in agriculture, education, and health care.

But so far, not even those kind of puppet candidates have emerged.

With all his talk of democratic reforms and compliance with international standards for elections, especially for foreign consumption, surely the Turkmen dictator will have to come up with at least one or two other alternatives to be convincing. At the nomination ceremony, the president was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti, "the next presidential elections, like those before, will take place with several candidates, openly, publicly, on an authentic competitive and democratic basis."

To run for president, a candidate must be a citizen of Turkmenistan born in the country, at least 40 years of age and no older than 70. He (it's unlikely to be "she") must speak Turkmen and also have resided in the country for the past 15 years. The candidate must also show that he has been working for state agencies, public associations, factories or enterprises. This knocks out of the race any opposition leader who fled the country after the failed coup attempt in 2002 or in subsequent years of oppression, or any official dismissed from his position still living in Turkmenistan.

Berdymukhamedov has used his position of considerable power as the head of this authoritarian Central Asian state to instruct the media to sing the praises of his reforms. He has also been staging a series of announcements about social benefits designed to reinforce popular support.

This week, the president signed a law granting an increase starting next year in state subsidies to disabled adults and children, widows, orphans and war veterans. He also announced that wages have increased in the last year 113.5 percent, and that 75 percent of the state budget (undisclosed) has been spent every month on education, health, culture and social services. It isn't clear how that figure squares with another presidential claim, that only 20 percent of oil and gas revenues go to the state budget.