Turkmenistan will hold snap presidential elections after the country's authoritarian leader announced he is ready to relinquish power to younger people. President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's statement that a new generation should direct the country suggests he is lining up his son Serdar for succession. Serdar Berdymukhamedov has risen through a series of increasingly prominent government posts — including stints as a diplomat, an MP and a provincial governor — and is now the deputy chairman of the Cabinet. The presidential election is to be held on March 12, the parliament declared on Saturday. No election in post-Soviet Turkmenistan has been considered genuinely competitive. While eight candidates ran against Berdymukhamedov in the last election in 2017, all expressed support for his government, and Berdymukhamedov tallied more than 97% of the vote. A trained dentist, Berdymukhamedov came to power in 2006 after the death of the eccentric Saparmurat Niyazov, known for totalitarian decrees banning public Internet access, erecting a rotating gold statue in his image in the capital Ashgabat, or renaming the months of the year after himself and his mother, among other things. For decades, Turkmenistan had the most political prisoners per capita of all former Soviet countries. Although Berdymukhamedov revoked a number of his predecessor's decisions, he established a pervasive cult of personality similar to Niyazov, adopting the nickname Arkadag, meaning 'protector' in Turkmen. Berdymukhamedov was also accused of similar repressive totalitarian tendencies, with many human rights organizations considering Turkmenistan to be one of the most closed-off societies in the world. Freedom House has consistently ranked the country at or near the bottom of its Freedom in the World rankings since its independence in 1991 — with Turkmenistan scoring a lowly 2/100 in the latest 2021 report, earning it a "not free" designation. In its 2020 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkmenistan as 179th out of 180 countries surveyed, only ahead of North Korea. Under his rule, the country has remained difficult for outsiders to enter, and Turkmenistan has not reported any cases of infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has struggled to diversify its economy, which is overwhelmingly dependent on its vast natural gas reserves and plagued by rampant inflation. At the same time, foreign investors have accused Berdymukhamedov's government of pervasive corruption, paralyzing bureaucracy and discrimination. Despite disagreements over gas exports to Russia, Berdymukhamedov has maintained friendly relations with Moscow and President Vladimir Putin, famously gifting him an Alabai or Central Asian shepherd puppy for his birthday in 2017. The 64-year-old Berdymukhamedov also became known for his numerous media stunts that included firing a pistol at a human-sized target while riding a bicycle, performing multilingual love songs he supposedly wrote and DJing on live TV, and hoisting a gold weightlifting bar to the applause of his Cabinet. A lover of the autochthonous Turkmen horses, Akhal-Teke, Berdymukhamedov erected his own gold statue of himself riding a horse in Ashgabat in 2015. — Euronews
