Election Campaign Follows Familiar Pattern

The presidential candidates in Turkmenistan are hinting at the possibility of sweeping changes in their pre-election pledges. But judging by the way the campaign is going, it is far too early to talk of any impending liberalisation, domestic and international commentators say.



In the February 11 ballot, voters will have a choice of six candidates to replace Saparmurat Niazov, who died in December. The hopefuls have been campaigning since the start of the year, holding meetings in constituencies across the country and publicising their programmes in the press.



However, the current acting president, Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov, is the undoubted favourite. His programme more than any other contains indications that things might take a turn for the better. He is promising to reform education by providing more years of teaching in schools and universities, to allow unhindered access to the internet, and to improve the healthcare and pension systems.



The Turkmen government insists the presence of six candidates is testament to a mature society based on people-power.



Sources in Turkmenistan tell NBCentralAsia that superficially, at least, all the candidates have been given equal rights. Newspapers print all their pictures the same size accompanied by the same amount of text, they hold identical meetings, and they even dress the same way.



However, local observers note that in all other respects, the campaign process falls down badly. According to one analyst based in Ashgabat, the constituency meetings are a pure formality, and anyone seen as holding independent views is excluded. The National Security Ministry is monitoring the whole process closely to ensure that workforces regarded as solidly reliable are put forward to represent the views of the electorate.



“The voter meetings take place in specially designated venues, always with the same workforce representatives, so that they remind one of rehearsed theatrical performances,” said the analyst. “All the candidates talk about continuing Saparmurat Niazov’s policies in their speeches.”



Other commentators agree that the campaigning is just for show. According to one local journalist, at these meetings the candidates read out their election programmes and reply only to those questions that have been prepared in advance by the Central Electoral Commission. Such questions are tailor-made so that they seem to reflect the interests of various population groups, and are handed out in advance.



The candidates’ programmes are not creative, and contain identical promises to amend some of Niazov’s reforms. None proposes radical steps that would really change people’s lives.



The conclusion that Oleg Gant, one of NBCentralAsia’s experts on Turkmenistan, draws from all this is that one cannot take the candidates’ election promises as a sign of future liberalisation, or count on substantive political reforms. Even though the message to the outside world is that Turkmenistan is about to become more open, this does not automatically mean these promises will be fulfilled.



“The repeated pledges of loyalty to earlier policies stand in stark contrast to the candidates’s election promises, clearly illustrating the contradictions that now exist within the system,” said Gant.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)