OSCE Shuns Turkmen Election

The OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, ODIHR, has recommended that the bloc should not send an observer mission to the February 12 presidential election in Turkmenistan.

President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov is competing for re-election to a second term. The candidates standing against him were handpicked by the regime itself, so he is certain to win a sweeping victory.

In a January 3 report, ODIHR bases its recommendation on the lack of a multi-party system in Turkmenistan, the limited opportunities to select genuinely alternative candidates to the incumbent president, the infringement of rights and freedoms, and the mismatch between Turkmen law and the obligations of OSCE members.

The statement followed a visit by an ODIHR assessment team to Turkmenistan.

ODIHR sent a limited “election support team” to a parliamentary election held in 2008, but these were not monitors and no report was issued.

Like Turkmenistan, neighbouring Kazakstan is an OSCE member. An OSCE election monitoring mission has been operating there for about a month for the January 15 parliamentary election.

Commentators inside Turkmenistan expressed disappointment that there would be no external scrutiny of the vote.

“This will make things substantially easier for regional and district electoral commissions on election day,” a 50-year-old teacher from outside the capital Ashgabat said.

Hopes that this election might be a little more open than previous ones were raised when Berdymuhammedov suggested that he might allow the opposition abroad to take part. This seems to have prompted a number of visits by foreign delegations, including from the OSCE, to discuss preparations.

Nothing came of the president’s statement, and no political parties other than his own exist. The candidate nomination process has consisted of carefully orchestrated meetings where members of the public approve preselected figures.

Yelena Myatieva, a journalist from Turkmenistan now based abroad, says that even if foreign election monitors were to come in, it would be far too late – the process of selecting candidates has been and gone.

“The bulk of the election preparations has been done, without any observers or experts being involved. The instruments of deceit and pseudo-democracy have gathered the momentum needed to ensure victory for the sitting president,” she said. “There’s now no reason to monitor the election.”

Farid Tukhbatullin, head of the Turkmen Human Rights Initiative based in Vienna, said OSCE officials had long turned a blind eye to the many abuses of rights and freedoms going on in Turkmenistan. Following meetings with Berdymuhammedov, Turkmen parliamentarians, electoral officials and the country’s Institue for RIghs and Democracy, the OSCE now appeared to have grasped that that the presidential election was not going to be democratic in any way.

“By refusing to observe the presidential election, the OSCE is denying it recognition as a democratic vote, and is deeming the democratic reforms that Berdymuhammedov promised five years ago to have come to nothing,” Tukhbatullin said.

This article was produced as part of IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.
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