Friday, December 22, 2006

The Legacy of Dictators

“His cult of personality included authorship of the ``Rukhnama,'' a book of spiritual guidance that became required reading for children. Earlier this year, he said he had asked Allah to ensure that anyone who read the ``Rukhnama'' three times would go directly to heaven - and he appeared to have little doubt his request would be honored.”

Jonathan at The Head Heeb has insightful comments on Turkmenistan;

“I'm stepping way outside my region here, but it doesn't require a scholar to recognize that Turkmenistan is facing a dangerous power vacuum. Niyazov has no obvious successor. He has systematically prevented any other person from becoming entrenched enough to be a potential rival - this year alone, for instance, he purged all five regional governors and the turnover within the cabinet and senior civil service exceeded 100 percent - and his revolving-door purges have included the middle as well as upper levels of government. Even the constitution doesn't provide any guidance, because the chair of the people's assembly, who is supposed to succeed the president, was Niyazov himself. The early signs suggest that deputy prime minister Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has the inside track, but the dust from the power struggles might not settle for months.

A great deal will likely depend on how much advance warning the inner circle had of Niyazov's impending demise, and whether they had a real chance to discuss the succession. In many absolute dictatorships, it's unwise to mention succession out loud even when the supreme ruler is on his deathbed, meaning that any preparation has to be surreptitious and haphazard. Any new head of state will also have to live in the shadow of an ideology designed to glorify Niyazov personally, which can sometimes be lived with when (as in North Korea) the successor has a kinship bond with the predecessor, but more often not. And as if that isn't enough, the incoming government's first task will be to solve a crisis-level bread shortage that has its roots in the increasingly dysfunctional agricultural planning system. There's going to be change in Turkmenistan, but even there, it might be possible for things to get worse.”

Related;
The Dictator For Life Is Dead
International Crisis Group-Turkmenistan
Obituary: Saparmurat Niyazov
Turkmen president's name was omnipresent
Saparmurat Niyazov (wikipedia)

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