I don’t really like making a post to just one article at a time so I’m going to just put everything for Central Asia I’ve read today here.

Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov has suggested that his country may hold presidential elections in 2009. Let’s all take a deep breath so that our laughs can be longer. Nathan notes conflicting accounts of one of Niyazov’s quotes appearing in different stories.

Which mean exactly the opposite if ???????succession??????? and ???????continuity??????? are used in their normal senses. I won????????t hold my breath either way because for all we know he could decide tomorrow that he????????s posting a board of learned leprechauns to run the country.

Meanwhile in nearby Kazakhstan, authorities are tightening electoral laws to make it harder for candidates to run. And by candidates, I mean anyone that could remotely challenge Nazarbayev.

ASTANA. April 8 (Interfax-Kazakhstan) – The Kazakh parliament passed constitutional amendments in the second reading on Friday to toughen the country’s electoral legislation.

The bill will now be submitted to the president for signing.

The amendments ban candidates or political parties running in the elections from organizing any rallies, marches or demonstration during the period between the end of the canvassing campaign and the official publication of the election results.

In addition, the document introduces the same date for the start of all candidates’ canvassing campaigns.

Nathan points to a new pro-democracy youth movement in Azerbaijan called “YOX,” meaning “no”.

???????YOX??????? Movement – Azerbaijan held its first large action campaign under the name of ???????LEAFLET RAINING??????? at all Universities in the Capital city of Baku on 7 April 2005. The action took place from 13.00 to 13.30 at the same time at all the Universities. The total number of the leaflets being thrown by the activists from the windows of the universities was blown across the city by the wind. Overall, 60 000 leaflets were thrown. Students grasped the leaflets. Lot of journalist were negotiated beforehand and assigned to different locations, including foreign journalists. France Press Agency were represented with 3 journalists.

The universities covered were: Baku State University, Polytechnic, Technical, State Languages, Caucasus, Economic, International, Business, Medical Universities and local branch of Dagestan University.

???????YOX??????? is now planning of different actions and hopefully is going to be able to say a complete ???????YOX??????? to the antidemocratic attempts and bring the social changes about.

A lot more information on it as well.

Lastly, with regards to Kyrgyzstan, I’ve been reading the three part series on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that asks some very crucual questions.