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Tajik ‘leader of nation’ seeks to extend 28-year rule
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Oct 11, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Tajikistan’s president
Emomali Rakhmon, who is running for re-election Sunday, led his
country out of civil war in the 1990s and is tipped to become the
longest-ruling head of a former Soviet state.
Largely mountainous, Rakhmon’s poor and mostly agrarian country
became a partner for Washington after the US invasion of neighbouring
Afghanistan in 2001.
But the 68-year-old former collective farm boss has looked to
Moscow — and more recently to China — to bolster a regime that
watchdogs say is defined by corruption and rights abuses.
While describing himself as a Muslim believer, Rakhmon is seen as
an opponent of rising Islamic observance in the secular republic,
backing forced beard shavings, bans on hijabs and a drive to exclude
“non-Tajik names” during his 28-year rule.
Born on October 5, 1952 in the southern Khatlon province, Rakhmon
became an MP in 1990 after running a collective farm for more than a
decade.
These beginnings have drawn comparisons with Belarusian leader
Alexander Lukashenko, who is two years younger than Rakhmon and took a
near-identical route to leadership.
Among the leaders of ex-Soviet states, only Kazakhstan’s Nursultan
Nazarbayev, who retired as president last year after 29 years in
power, has ruled longer than Rakhmon.
Few would have guessed that Rakhmon would last the course when he
was promoted in 1992 to chair the national assembly — a position
equivalent to head of state — as fighting between the pro-government
forces and the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) raged.
He was elected president in 1994, after the position was
re-established, and re-elected in 1999, 2006 and 2013. None of these
votes were endorsed by international monitors.
A 1997 agreement that ended Tajikistan’s five-year civil war that
claimed tens of thousands of lives allowed the UTO a proportion of
government positions.
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But Rakhmon gradually sidelined political competition.
In 2015, the authorities banned an Islamic opposition party, seen
as a legacy of the peace deal, and began jailing its members. Several
have died whilst serving their sentences.
– ‘Leader of the Nation’ –
In Sunday’s vote, Rakhmon faces four pliant candidates, while the
parliament, whose upper house is chaired by his son and likely
successor Rustam Emomali, is also opposition-free.
While Rakhmon’s personal friend Lukashenko faces an unprecedented
challenge to his rule, the Tajik leader has encountered few obstacles.
In 2016 he cemented his position further with constitutional
changes that allowed him to run for office an unlimited number of
times as the “leader of the nation” and “founder of peace and national
unity.”
In the last decade, Rakhmon’s government has embarked on a number
of grandiose projects, which critics say are wasteful and point to
megalomania.
The capital Dushanbe hosts a flagpole that was once the tallest in
the world, as well as the biggest library, teahouse and theatre in
Central Asia.
Construction of the world’s tallest hydroelectric dam, which could
facilitate exports to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is also underway, with
some making calls to change its name from Rogun to Rakhmon.
Tajik state television regularly fawns over Rakhmon and his
interior minister Ramazon Rahimzoda has written poems lauding his
boss.
What everyday Tajiks think of him has always been harder to gauge.
Although many credit Rakhmon for maintaining the post-war peace, they
denounce corruption and nepotism and the increasingly strident attacks
on Islam.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of his rule is Tajikistan’s
long-standing status as one of the world’s most remittance-dependent
countries, with hundreds of thousands of Tajik migrants toiling in
Russia and elsewhere.
Lacking a voice or opportunity at home, many chose to vote with their feet.
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