ASHGABAT - Turkmenistan will hold presidential elections in 2009, with three or four alternative candidates to choose from, the country's autocratic ruler Saparmurat Niyazov declared on national television Friday.
"In 2009 at the People's Council meeting there will be three or four candidates nominated for the head of state's post... the elections will complete the formation of a new structure of power based on democratic principles," Niyazov said on national television.
Late Thursday the state information agency quoted Niyazov as saying that the elections would take place in 2008. An agency spokesman told AFP the statement was issued erroneously.
"I am fully aware of my responsibility before the people and the nation as well as my duty to ensure succession in the highest echelons of power," Niyazov said.
"We must introduce a new practice of electing the authorities, starting with the president and ending with leaders of regions," said Niyazov.
The elections for the country's parliament, which critics say is little more than a rubber stamp, will take place a year earlier than stipulated under the constitution, Niyazov said.
The comments mark a return to Niyazov's habit of regularly addressing this desert nation's five million population on television after a gap that followed the toppling of nearby Kyrgyzstan's first post-Soviet leader Askar Akayev on March 24.
Niyazov, 65, was Turkmenistan's last Soviet-era leader and has clung to power ever since, creating a personality cult around himself and his deceased parents.
So far there has been no sign of a successor emerging, leading some critics to fear a turbulent power hand-over in the event of Niyazov's demise.
The Turkmen leader has crushed all opposition and tends to sack government ministers on an almost a monthly basis.
04/08/2005 10:44 GMT