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BelarusIn his 16 years at the helm of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko has earned himself the enviable tag of "Europe's Last Dictator." This is despite his best efforts to prove otherwise. In 2004, he later confessed, he had deliberately instructed state radio to announce a lower share of the vote for himself--86%, rather than the 93.5% he'd actually won. Why? Because the generous autocrat had hoped to please his external trade partners by making the result look more like a conventional democratic vote-share. But it turns out you just can't win with some folks. And neither can you lose.Likewise, his commitment to civil liberties is absolute. "I want to come from the premise that the elections in Belarus are held for ourselves," he announced just before the 2004 poll. "I am sure that it is the Belarus people who are the masters in our state." Of course, at the same time, he also announced that anyone joining an opposition protest would be automatically treated as a terrorist and would "have their necks wrung… as one might a duck."A collective-farm manager in olden times, Lukashenko was a genuine populist leader who won the elections in 1994 by scything past the upper crust of decrepit former Soviet politburo. His campaign was run and won on an "Ordinary-Joe ticket." He was the common man. He was change. And hope. Since then, he's made mincemeat of anyone who hopes for change. Two of his cabinet colleagues have simply disappeared, never to be seen again.
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UzbekistanOn 9 January 2000, Islam Karimov was re-elected as president of Uzbekistan with a whopping 91.9% of the vote. Perhaps it would have been closer to 91.89% had not Karimov's only opponent actually voted for him too. That opponent, Abdulhafiz Jalalov, admitted that he was, naturally enough, full-square behind the President, and that his only role had been to make the whole democracy charade seem like it had some purpose.
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TurkmenistanThe dictating scene in Turkmenistan has been in recession since the death, in 2006, of Saparmurat Niyazov. The incomparably batshit "Turkmenbashi"'s foibles included naming the days of the week after his family, naming nearly everything else after himself, forbidding the growing of beards (allegedly because he couldn't grow one himself), closing all libraries outside the capital because he believed that Turkmens were all illiterate anyway, banning video games and car-radios, banning smoking in public (but only after he was forced to give up the coffin-nails following a heart-op), banning lip-syncing at pop concerts, demanding that a palace of ice be built at the outskirts of the capital (despite the year-round 100 degree heat), sacking his interior minister on live TV (declaring, "You've never done much to fight crime anyway"), and writing a national anthem that made repeated reference to the sun shining out of his ass. In 2006, he closed all the hospitals outside the capital. He was that kind of guy.So when he died of heart failure, it was natural that a brainwashed nation would turn to a man who already bore an uncanny physical resemblance to their dear departed leader. It was also reasonable that Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow--whose name doesn't get any easier to spell no matter how often you look at it--would want to capitalize on his likeness. His agents soon spread a rumor that the ex-health minister was the illegitimate son of their former leader. The dynastic connection established, new President For Life Berdimuhamedow was able to start building up his own pool of wacky requests, including asserting that only he should be referred to by his first name in state press releases (others having been reduced to mere initials). While reserving the right to do bad things to anyone he doesn't like the look of, the former dentist has however made a few concessions: deleting all mentions of Niyazov in the national anthem, un-naming the days of the week, allowing news anchors to wear make-up--you know, the sort of stuff that was in the Lib Dem manifesto. And so, while they still rank third behind North Korea and Burma on the global index of press freedom, when you're working from such a high base, his modest relaxations have already earned Berdimuhamedow pats on the back and a "great reformer" tag from Western powers. Or at least from those Western powers eager to get their hands on his country's vast natural gas reserves. Everybody loves vast natural gas reserves.GAVIN HAYNES
