The "Day of Silence" was announced today in Turkmenistan, one day before the presidential elections scheduled for February 12. All in all 2307 polling stations have been installed in the country and another 29 sites for voting have been opened at the diplomatic missions of the republic abroad. The country has more than 2.987 million voters on the list. Every citizen of the republic who is 18 years or older has been invited to cast a ballot. The elections will be held on Sunday from 08:00 to 18:00 local time (07:00-17:00 GMT).
Elections of the President of Turkmenistan are conducted on the basis of universal, equal and direct suffrage by secret ballot. The candidate with half of the votes will be considered the winner.
Any citizen of Turkmenistan who was born in the country, is in the age category from 40 to 70, speaks the state language and has been permanently residing in Turkmenistan in the past 15 years can become a presidential candidate. The President is elected for a term of five years and shall assume office after taking the oath. The head of state in Turkmenistan is also the head of the government.
The president will be chosen from eight candidates. Among them is the current president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, elected for the first time on February 11, 2007, after the sudden death of President Saparmurat Niyazov.
Back then Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov received 89.23% of the votes.
For the first time the presidential elections in Turkmenistan will be attended by 63 international observers from the CIS mission. The OSCE has not been officially invited to the elections in Turkmenistan. However, a group of experts of the Bureau for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) will monitor the elections in Ashgabat.
On the "Day of Silence" it is prohibited to campaign for the candidates or publish social surveys.
As the director of the International Institute of Political Studies, Yevgeny Minchenko, told VK, "Turkmenistan's political system is now stable enough. There is no reason to expect the elections to be at the center of an attempt to organize another "Arab spring" revolution. There are a number of internal contradictions associated with the level of the population, with inter-tribal relations, but in general, I think that today they are largely cropped. There is a problem that was once typical for the Maghreb and Middle East countries, associated with excesses of a young population, a high unemployment rate, that is a generational gap. But until now this issue has not been critical."
Regarding the economic situation in Turkmenistan, according to the expert of "Vestnik Kavakza" the main problem is still the restriction of movement, because given the situation in the regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will only get worse, the gas route Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) is unlikely to develop in any way.
"There are risks associated with Iran, and that is why the Iranian direction is also quite risky. There are unresolved issues with the Caspian Sea, particularly concerning the Trans-Caspian pipeline issue. A long-term external risk factor might become a question of unilateral re-orientation of Turkmenistan towards China in the following years, and to a lesser extent towards other Asian countries such as Turkey and Malaysia. If we recall past events, the intensification of cooperation with China has become one of the factors of external risk.
If Turkmenistan conducts a competent foreign policy, does not irritate investors, lets them understand the opportunities and ensure minimal visibility, and if there is no external pressure, the regime can be fairly stable for several more years, maybe even decades," Evgeny Minchenko concludes.
