No choice offered to Turkmenistan electorate

TURKMENISTAN: A week before Ukraine is expected to vote its ex-Communist rulers out of office, Turkmenistan's parliamentary elections showed yesterday that Soviet-style certainties still prevail in some corners of Moscow's former empire.

Ignoring derision from the international community, the isolated Central Asian nation completed a poll that was notable for the fact that all the candidates supported the eccentric and authoritarian President Saparmurat Niyazov.

More than 130 officials from Mr Niyazov's Democratic Party stood for election to the 50-seat, single-chamber parliament, whose functions are limited to enthusiastically approving the often-bizarre edicts of the self-declared "president for life".

Also known as the "father of all Turkmens", Mr Niyazov has renamed certain years and months after his relatives and banned both circuses and ballet, along with the wearing of gold teeth and long hair, for not being part of traditional Turkmen culture.

Voting near the capital Ashgabat, he insisted that the elections reflected the will of Turkmenistan's five million people and complied with international standards. "Democratic values are the basis of our society's life," said Mr Niyazov, who has ruled the gas-rich state since 1985 and shown little tolerance for opposition.

Human rights groups say he used an alleged assassination attempt in 2002 to crack down on critics, jailing and torturing hundreds of people and exiling their relatives to remote regions.

Turnout was put at 77 per cent yesterday, a poor showing compared to the 1999 parliamentary poll turnout of 99.8 per cent.