The son of Turkmenistan’s autocratic leader won presidential elections, officials said yesterday, paving the way for hereditary succession.
Serdar Berdymukhamedov, 40, won last Saturday’s ballot with 73% of the vote, election officials in the former Soviet Central Asian country said, beating eight other candidates.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was among world leaders to congratulate the candidate shortly after the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) announced the results.
Few in the isolated country of six million people had doubted that Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov’s only son Serdar would win the vote.
Berdymukhamedov senior, who is now Turkmenistan’s outgoing president, chair of the cabinet and senate chief, has been the regime’s top decision-maker for 15 years.
The strongman known as the gas-rich country’s “protector” has dominated public life since the country’s founding president, Saparmurat Niyazov, died in 2006.
Last month Berdymukhamedov said he would step aside and allow “young leaders” to govern, triggering a snap vote.
In the end Berdymukhamedov junior obtained a victory margin far lower than the 98% and 97% routs posted by his 64-year-old father in the hermit state’s previous two elections.
Putin telephoned Berdymukhamedov senior first, who passed the telephone to Serdar to receive the Kremlin chief’s congratulations on “a convincing victory”, Turkmenistan’s state information agency TDH reported.
TDH said Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan also phoned in congratulations, as did the leaders of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — the other four former Soviet states in Central Asia.
The elder Berdymukhamedov informed the leaders that he “intends to continue his active work in a new capacity”, as chairman of Turkmenistan’s senate, the agency added.