Turkmenistan had its presidential election on Sunday, and since it turned out just about exactly like we all expected, I might as well have written a post about it last week and scheduled it to publish today.
The government claims phenomenal turnout of 98%. RFE/RL correspondents say that activity at polling stations was low. Ferghana.ru says that turnout was mixed outside of the capital. The New York Times reports that a Western diplomat in Ashkabad as well as opposition sources both claim much lower turnout.
There were no outside observers monitoring the election, but one member of the OSCE delegation in the country said that the election was neither free nor fair. The delegation said that Turkmenistan wants to open up to the world and the Chairman of the OSCE said that that organization is eager to be of assistance to Turkmenistan.
We will have to wait until Wednesday for the announcement of the winner, but it would be silly to expect anyone but the grim-looking fellow above and to the right to win. Though he is not officially the president yet, Berdimuhammedov is already ushering in an age of wonders.
It must be noted that just today, the Turkmen government announced that one of the promises that was made during the election campaign — better access to the Internet — is becoming a reality.
Turkmentelekom, the only Internet provider in Turkmenistan, announced it is preparing “the first state Internet cafe in the country.”
Bootleg copies of Counter-Strike are surely already making their way down to Ashkabad from Moscow and Almaty.
Sean Roberts says that even though the election is over, Berdimuhammedov has plenty of work to do to consolidate his position. Meanwhil, ICG released a policy briefing on Turkmenistan urging Turkmenistan’s government to make a handful of quick reforms as a sign of its commitment to reversing Niazov’s destructive policies and the West to call for and encourage reforms.
And if you want to see some great photos from the election and Turkmenistan in the lead-up to the vote, be sure to visit Michael Steen’s Flickr photostream.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2040 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan founded Registan.net in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural factors shape risks and opportunities. Follow him on Twitter or drop him a line.
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Rigging the outcome is one thing – it’s opaque and easy to do – but I never understood why these states like to crank the turnout up so high. 98%? Come on.
After a referendum in Tajikistan, with a 96% offical turnout, none of the Tajik co-workers and colleagues I asked voted. Because of this it was obvious to them that 96% was totally bogus – which means the result of the referendum is in doubt.
The psychology of this is interesting; the conclusion to be made is that not only are they rigging the outcome, but the officials have such utter contempt for their own population that they do not even care that it is painfully obvious that they are lying.
My best guess is that they do this for the sake of legitimizing their victory with an enormous public mandate. The thing is, the public knows it’s phony and the people who rig the election know it’s phony. So why do it?
I suspect that if presidents were more involved in rigging their own elections, turnouts and victory margins wouldn’t be so high. I have to wonder whether or not these results are the aggregate of individual election districts doing their best to impress the guy at the top.
IMO, this obession with the ninety-something turnouts and similar %-ages of the votes is a psychological-cultural thing that is very common among ‘power elites’ in the periphery — not only in ex-Soviet Eurasia but also in parts of Africa, for instance.
Their reasoning is that you do not build and legitimise absolute, sultanistic power on merely 60 or 70% of the votes. They can simply not live with the idea of having substantial parts of the population that do not recognise their power.
This does not only plays at the top but also among the ‘lesser power elites’.
“I have to wonder whether or not these results are the aggregate of individual election districts doing their best to impress the guy at the top.”
Yep. I saw that in Kazakhstan during the presidential election in 2005, for example. A lot of the rigging, and of the intimidation and sabotage of the opposition, is actually not ordered and organised by the capital but by akims at the rayon (country/préfecture) and oblast (province/département) level and their entourages.
These bozos are appointed from ‘above’ and depend on the goodwill from ‘above’ for their political survival. As such, they try to excel and prove themselves to those ‘above’.