The president of Turkmenistan is braced to join the Central Asian club of potential leaders-for-life with proposed changes to the Constitution that will inevitably be approved in October.
Proposed amendments published in Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper on February 15 envision presidential terms being increased to seven years, from the current five, and the 70-year upper age limit for presidential candidates being scrapped.
Such revision to the Constitution are transparently intended to ensure former dentist President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, now 58 years old, can remain in situ as long as he is alive.
The next presidential election had been slated for 2017, but that date will now likely be pushed back to 2019.
Before the amendments can come into force, they will have to be subjected to a public discussion at the Council of Elders in the capital, Ashgabat, later this year. Those events are typically reserved for extolling the president and wild clapping in support of his policies, so the procedure is only a formality.
Berdymukhamedov’s successor was famously, of course, himself named leader-for-life in 1999. That life, as it turned out, wasn’t very long, since Saparmurat Niyazov died of a sudden heart attack in late 2006 at the age of 66.
There are other changes being proposed to the Constitution.
If the president cannot, for one reason or another, acquit his duties, then the role will pass to the speaker of parliament. Elections for a new leader will have to be held no later than 60 days, and the acting president is barred from standing. No changes to the Constitution will be permitted in that period.
Turkmenistan veterans will recognize that formulation, since those were the rules when Niyazov died. On that occasion, the speaker of parliament, Ovezgeldy Atayev, was swiftly dismissed and arrested on charges of trying to drive his daughter-in-law to suicide.
Government officials claimed in 2012 that Atayev had since been released, although there has been no independent verification of his whereabouts.
Under the soon-to-be-scrapped rules, an incapacitated president must be replaced by one of his deputy prime ministers (the president is the head of government as well as head of state), to be appointed by a sitting of the State Security Council.
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