Tolkun at neweurasia.net has written an excellent roundup of the excitement brewing over the forthcoming presidential election in Uzbekistan.
In any other democratic country (Uzbekistan is declared to be democratic), there would be hot political debates among candidates for presidency and pre-election campaigns going very actively all over the country. But not in Uzbekistan. No one in this country seems to care about it. No one, except few independent journalists and human rights activists (who didn’t leave the country yet) dare to speak about this already “tabooed” topic.
Oh. There is some fun speculation about Gulnara Karimova (who loves beating up old men for tea), and ways about how Karimov might hold on to power—including the sad fact that the muted international reaction to Nazarbayev’s “President 4EVA” reforms have created something of a precedent for him to rewrite the Constitution so he’ll no longer be staying in office 11 months past the expiration of his term.
Still—I find Uzbekistan’s Presidential race/farce much more interesting and far less tedious or frustrating than the years-long campaign in the U.S.
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Morning Joshua,
The fun is waiting for the explanation from Shirin Akiner and Svante Cornell as to how Karimov’s failure to retire will be democratic and constitutional.
Craig –
Yeouch!
Oh, snap! Good one Craig
As for realistic retirement plans for Karimov, his sociopathic daughter and their cronies, what about this one:
http://www.ncr-iran.org/images/stories/repression/public-hanging-mass.jpg
Islam Karimov had BETTER not go all Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov on me. I expect him to continue to be an authoritarian dictator until:
1) death
or
2) coup d’etat
The last thing I need is to run out of dictators to blog about.
The results are being added and corrected to announce in December that our esteemed president has won the election by getting 94.8% of the votes.
Only?! Who will have the 5.2% then?
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