So farewell then Saparmurat Niyazov

mike65

from bbc
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6198983.stm

Mr Niyazov became Communist Party chief of what was then a Soviet republic in 1985 and was elected first president of independent Turkmenistan in 1991.

In 1999, he was made president-for-life by the country's rubber-stamp parliament.

During his reign, Mr Niyazov established a cult of personality in which he was styled as Turkmenbashi, or Leader of all Turkmens.

He renamed months and days in the calendar after himself and his family, and ordered statues of himself to be erected throughout the desert nation.

Cities, an airport and a meteorite were given his name.

Mr Niyazov was intolerant of criticism and allowed no political opposition or free media in the nation of five million people.

His laws became increasingly personal. It was forbidden to listen to car radios or smoke in public, or for young men to wear beards.

An alleged assassination attempt in 2002 was used to crush his few remaining opponents.

A guick google shows he had about the same taste as Nikolai Ceaucescu.

Sad to see him go. Only a few left now.

Mike.

verbatim

He was a very interesting leader indeed. Didn't he want to build a palace made of ice in the middle of the desert?
He was certainly a charmer with the ladys, banning makeup because the women were already beautiful enough

In some ways he was the most entertaining leader in international politics, in some ways he was a despotic ****.

Although it's difficult to choose his nuttiest act, I think recommending that people chew bones to strengthen their teeth and banning lip synching on television must be up there. Oh and the national holiday for melons.

Great article in the ST magazine lately. Even though he was a loon, he seemed to be one of the more benevolent ones...

Lou.m

Yes i saw the article in the Sunday Times too there also another one in another paper but i cannot remember which one. He certainly was a very strange man his eccentricities made him seem more of a joker and helped soften his image i believe, especially when journalists talk of him. I know much more about such things like he renamed certain months after himself and other family members and he banned gold teeth etc then who he had killed as that was usually what people said of him. And when people talk of him now that is what they will say first he banned beards and then he was a despot. Very clever, be a fool and you can get away with a lot more.

And you get away with even more than that if you really are a fool. People will think of you as a silly blunderer or a buffoon. No one thinks of Gorege Bush as being sadistic for the way he has allowed Iraqi prisoners because we cannot figure out if he is clever enough to be imoral we think of it as stupidity and he gets away with his ignorant fool image.

Niyazov in some ways was very clever without knowing it perhaps, if you are nutty enough people will not believe anything real that comes out and if they do it is just crazy buffoonery and people tend not to concentrate on the cruelty but the strange stupidity of it all.

Lets hope thats not what is remembered.

InFront

From another link similar to Mike's

After Turkmenistan gained independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, Niyazov won an election the next year with an official 99.5 percent of the vote, in balloting deemed by outsiders as neither free nor fair. The People's Council, a handpicked body of loyalists, named him president for life in 2002.

Niyazov led an extravagant personality cult. He renamed the months of January, April and September after himself, his mother and the "Ruhnama," a history and spiritual guide he is said to have written.

Almost everyone in Turkmenistan, adults and children alike, were compelled to study Niyazov's two-volume "Ruhnama." The country's libraries were all but emptied except for copies of "Ruhnama" and Niyazov's collections of poetry.

In the capital of Ashgabat, the central landmark is a 35-foot golden statue of Niyazov that rotates slowly to always face the sun. The statue's arms are raised to welcome the sun at dawn and bid it farewell at dusk.

He banned video games, gold teeth, opera and ballet, and once encouraged his people to chew on bones — good, he said, for their teeth.

Although this guy is now a laughing stock, and I know he wasn't a democrat, but you'd wonder what kind of people (someone must have) chose so bizarre a leader. people are strange...