Election Time

It’s the Presidential elections next week so, even whilst trying to be apolitical, it’s too much of a subject not to comment. Anyway, being on the KGB popularity list is at least still a bit exclusive; having your phone and email bugged by the CIA is just so common and unfashionable..

There are six candidates including the incumbent President. Apparently all five challengers have already said they think the current government is doing a good job and one is reported to have advised his supporters not to vote for him but to vote for the incumbent. Now I may be a bit naïve politically, but these strike me as unusual tactics if you want to replace the current head of state.  Perhaps they are just being brutally honest and want to avoid the manufactured partisanship that characterises most democracies and has recently brought the United States government to a complete standstill. Perhaps…

Most would agree that the election is a foregone conclusion. The incumbent President, Emomali Rahmon, will be elected for his fourth term in office. There are stories of shady dealings and the use of the State apparatus to neutralise any real opposition, which are probably true but such measures  hardly seem worth it. Most people have never heard of any other politicians and, most dispiritingly, there is little faith in the democratic system anyway. Few see the solutions to their many problems as lying in free elections and voting for someone else. And who can blame them?

Subtle reminder at the University

The “triumph” of liberal democracy has turned a bit sour, at least in central Asia. The much heralded benefits of the free market economy and political freedom have not arrived. The old elites are firmly in control, richer and stronger than ever, having taken democracy on board sufficiently to get greater than ever legitimacy for their rule. In so many countries of the world, it has not proved too difficult for the powerful elites to shape democracy into just another system to meet their own ends.

What people want is security, fairness, justice, health care, rights to property and the freedom to better themselves. Democracy doesn’t in itself deliver these things. It’s perhaps the vanity of politicians all over the world that has persuaded us that it should and could. I don’t know what the alternative is; as Churchill said following his post war election defeat, “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” I guess the issue is that positive economic and social development is not just about the system of government. It’s more complicated than that but it’s tempting to think there is just this one simple answer.

Snow on the hills creeps towards Dushanbe

Meanwhile, life in Dushanbe goes on, saved from the dreariness of being battered by political campaigning. The snow is on the hills around the city and the price of tomatoes is rocketing. I feel a kind of nostalgia being in a country where fruit and vegetables come and go with the seasons. It reminds me of the treat of “new potatoes” arriving in the shops in Scotland back in my youth. Nostalgia aside however, it’s a step back for the economy. Despite being 93% mountains, the country has some rich fertile land and good quality production. The Soviet systems of cold storage, packing plants and distribution have all been allowed to collapse, though, and so we move from surplus to scarcity as the seasons change. For our landlord and his extended family that has meant an industrious period of peeling, cooking and pickling everything that has been around for the last month or two. I’ve seen the cat move with surprising alacrity recently; obviously doesn’t want to end up pickled in a jar for winter…