You're reading: Observer: Turkmenistan presidential election just a show

MOSCOW - Sunday's presidential election in Turkmenistan, which gave one more term to incumbent Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, was a put-up job with the president's rivals being "part of the stage scenery," a local election observer said on Monday, Feb. 13

"It makes no sense to talk about any offenses in the course of voting. The population hadn’t been allowed to put forward candidates for president," the observer told Interfax by telephone.

"The rivals of the head of state, who had been carefully selected and then shortlisted to seven, were lackluster figures who were part of the stage scenery," he said. "The majority of the population can’t remember their faces or names."

The Central Election Commission announced on Monday that Berdimuhamedow had received 97.14% of the vote.

Water Resources Minister Annageldi Yazmyradow showed the second best performance of 1.07% while the lowest result was 0.16%.

The poll showed a turnout of 96.7%, the commission said.

"The numerous compulsory meetings between candidates and voters that were shown in tedious and monotonous news reports didn’t produce any impression. They [the candidates] were mechanically mumbling monotonous texts without raising their eyes from the paper," said the observer.

"There were no live monologues, meetings with the population or debates," he said. "Their bland and monotonous programs for the most part extolled the ‘Era of Rebirth,’ were published in the newspapers on one occasion each with small photos of the alternative candidates and under large pictures of the incumbent president."

"Stands with photos that were all the same size and with some text on them that were put up on the central streets and hung up at the polling stations led the Observers Mission of the Commonwealth of Independent States to issue an expert assessment that there were ‘equal opportunities,’" the observer said.

"People who are well known in the country were advocating voting for the incumbent president. And, though everyone knew very well who would win the election, on Feb. 10 and 11 directors of polling stations made their personnel to go round people’s apartments and urge people to vote for the president."

"Rank-and-file members of election commissions were ordered to phone voters, go round people’s apartments and get at least one member of a family to come and vote for the whole vote. Family voting was widely used at these elections as well," the observer said.

"Many people were ticking their ballots at random because the older generation can’t read the Latin alphabet while all the texts about the candidates and all the invitations and ballots were written in Latin script," he said.

Moreover, lists of voters had been compiled in a slapdash way, according to the observer. "Quite often people who were dead were invited to vote," he said.