Key Appointment Remains Unfilled
Key Appointment Remains Unfilled
The way the new Turkmen leaders shape the country's parliamentary structure will be a crucial indicator of their real intentions, NBCentralAsia observers say.
Since President Saparmurat Niazov died in December, the Halk Maslahaty or People’s Council – the country’s supreme constitutional body and effectively a second parliament – has remained leaderless, since the late president was also its chairman.
Observers thought the position would be automatically go to Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov after he was inaugurated as president on February 14, but this has not happened.
An appointment is expected when the Halk Maslahaty next meets in early March.
NBCentralAsia analysts believe that President Berdymuhammedov and his entourage have not yet decided what kind of role the Halk Maslahaty and the Mejlis – the standing parliament which is currently accorded a lesser constitutional role - should play in the new Turkmenistan.
The Halk Maslahaty is a broad assembly of 2,507 members including government ministers, Mejlis members, the president, members of the ruling Democratic Party, and assorted notables and elders who meet a couple of times a year and has wide-ranging powers including the right to dismiss parliament.
Vyacheslav Mamedov, an NBCentralAsia expert on Turkmenistan, thinks the appointment remains pending because apart from President Berdymuhammedov, there is no obvious candidate to fill the post.
Berdymuhammedov, 49, could yet take on the job, not least because of constitutional amendments pushed through in late December which reduced the minimum age for the Halk Maslahaty chairman from 50 to 40.
“The age reduction... is a clear sign that the post could go to Berdymuhammedov,” said Mamedov. “But [he] hasn’t taken that decision yet.”
An NBCentralAsia political observer based in Ashgabat believes that one option is to maintain the status quo – in other words, the Halk Maslahaty would retain its constitutional supremacy and either the president or a close ally would become its chairman.
But this observer also outlined a more radical scenario where the Halk Maslahaty would be stripped of the extensive powers that Niazov granted it and reduced to a quasi-ceremonial role, and the Mejlis would acquire greater power in the system.
“It is quite possible that the Halk Maslahaty will be turned back into the sort of national conference, the role it played until 2002, when it was granted rights to approve presidential candidates and confirm elected presidents in office,” he said.
“If that happened, the status of the Mejlis would be boosted,” the observer said.
With the Halk Maslahaty effectively sidelined, the way would be clear for the Mejlis to acquire some of the political weight it deserves as Turkmenistan’s formal parliament.
Such a development would therefore, said the observer, signal that the country’s new leaders really are serious about moving forward on liberalisation.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
Since President Saparmurat Niazov died in December, the Halk Maslahaty or People’s Council – the country’s supreme constitutional body and effectively a second parliament – has remained leaderless, since the late president was also its chairman.
Observers thought the position would be automatically go to Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov after he was inaugurated as president on February 14, but this has not happened.
An appointment is expected when the Halk Maslahaty next meets in early March.
NBCentralAsia analysts believe that President Berdymuhammedov and his entourage have not yet decided what kind of role the Halk Maslahaty and the Mejlis – the standing parliament which is currently accorded a lesser constitutional role - should play in the new Turkmenistan.
The Halk Maslahaty is a broad assembly of 2,507 members including government ministers, Mejlis members, the president, members of the ruling Democratic Party, and assorted notables and elders who meet a couple of times a year and has wide-ranging powers including the right to dismiss parliament.
Vyacheslav Mamedov, an NBCentralAsia expert on Turkmenistan, thinks the appointment remains pending because apart from President Berdymuhammedov, there is no obvious candidate to fill the post.
Berdymuhammedov, 49, could yet take on the job, not least because of constitutional amendments pushed through in late December which reduced the minimum age for the Halk Maslahaty chairman from 50 to 40.
“The age reduction... is a clear sign that the post could go to Berdymuhammedov,” said Mamedov. “But [he] hasn’t taken that decision yet.”
An NBCentralAsia political observer based in Ashgabat believes that one option is to maintain the status quo – in other words, the Halk Maslahaty would retain its constitutional supremacy and either the president or a close ally would become its chairman.
But this observer also outlined a more radical scenario where the Halk Maslahaty would be stripped of the extensive powers that Niazov granted it and reduced to a quasi-ceremonial role, and the Mejlis would acquire greater power in the system.
“It is quite possible that the Halk Maslahaty will be turned back into the sort of national conference, the role it played until 2002, when it was granted rights to approve presidential candidates and confirm elected presidents in office,” he said.
“If that happened, the status of the Mejlis would be boosted,” the observer said.
With the Halk Maslahaty effectively sidelined, the way would be clear for the Mejlis to acquire some of the political weight it deserves as Turkmenistan’s formal parliament.
Such a development would therefore, said the observer, signal that the country’s new leaders really are serious about moving forward on liberalisation.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
