In the snap presidential election on July 9, Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev – who was first elected in 2016, then reelected in 2021 – sought a fresh term after an April 30 national referendum adopted amendments to the constitution that changed the presidential term from five to seven years.

According to Uzbekistan’s constitution, a person can only be president for two consecutive terms. The Uzbek constitutional experts ruled that Mirziyoyev’s past two five-year terms do not bar him from seeking two new seven-year terms in office.

It is no surprise that Mirziyoyev found a way to stay in office. He is not the first leader in Central Asia to finesse legislation to prolong his term and there is no reason to believe he will be the last. Central Asia’s history since independence in 1991 shows that there is no graceful exit from office for presidents – except for the grave.

The grave

The grave is where the two presidents who suffered the least amount of damage to their legacies are: Turkmenistan’s first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, and in Mirziyoyev’s country, Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan’s first president.

Niyazov was Turkmenbashi – the head of the Turkmen. He died in December 2006, but vestiges of Niyazov’s time in power remain.

The giant Arch of Neutrality, a 75-metre structure topped by a golden statue of Niyazov, was moved from the centre of the Turkmen capital Ashgabat to the suburbs. The statue of Niyazov no longer rotates to face the direction of the sun as it once did, but the monument is still intact.

Turkmenistan’s Caspian port city of Krasnovodsk was renamed Turkmenbashi in 1993 and it retains that name now.

Islam Karimov died in 2016. There were no statues to Karimov in Uzbekistan when he died, but monuments to Karimov were unveiled in his native Samarkand and in the Uzbek capital Tashkent a year after his death.

The remains of both Niyazov and Karimov lie in ornate mausoleums specially built after their deaths.

For Central Asian presidents who decide, or are forced, to leave office while they are still alive, what followed was very different:

Managed transition

In Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev stepped down as president in March 2019 after being in office since Kazakhstan became independent (and before that leader of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic since June 1989).

Nazarbayev worked on his legacy for decades. He became “Elbasy,” Leader of the People. Streets were named after him, a university, the airport in the capital, and then the name of the capital itself was changed from Astana to Nur-Sultan right after Nazarbayev resigned as president.

Sycophantic deputies in Kazakhstan’s parliament had compared Nazarbayev to George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Parliament passed laws in 1998, 2007, 2011, and 2017 that gave special privileges to Nazarbayev as “First President” or “Elbasy”, including immunity for himself and immediate family members from investigation or prosecution.

Nazarbayev stepped down as president, but retained his position as secretary of the security council, which still gave him extensive powers.

To many inside and outside Kazakhstan, it was unclear if Nazarbayev or Tokayev was governing the country. That changed when large protests broke out in Kazakhstan at the start of January 2022.

Peaceful protests that swept across the country were infiltrated by provocateurs in large cities of southern and eastern Kazakhstan and violence started.

The Kazakh government has never provided many credible details about who started the violence that left officially 238 people dead, but hours after disorder broke out, Nazarbayev was dismissed as security council secretary.

Longtime Nazarbayev ally Karim Massimov, who was head of the Ministry of National Security when the protests started, was dismissed the same day and arrested three days later.

Nazarbayev has rarely been seen in public since then. His once vast powers and constitutional privileges have been slowly stripped away. Some members of his immediate family have lost many of their financial assets in the country.

Nazarbayev is already being remembered as a leader who, along with his family and close associates, plundered the wealth of Kazakhstan, leaving the people with crumbs.

Nazarbayev is not under investigation, but one gets the impression that authorities are simply waiting for the former president, who turns 83 on July 6, to die before going after his family.

Almazbek Atambayev was Kyrgyzstan’s president from 2011-2017.  He is the only Central Asian leader to leave office when his presidential term expired.

Unfortunately, like Nazarbayev later, Atambayev wanted to continue governing the country by putting his own man in as president.

That man was Sooronbai Jeyenbekov, a former governor of the southern Osh Province who had served as Atambayev’s prime minister from April 2016 to August 2017.

Not long after taking the oath of office, President Jeyenbekov showed he had no intention of being a front man for Atambayev. Atambayev showered Jeyenbekov with criticisms and publicly apologised for bringing Jeyenbekov to power.

Parliament stripped Atambayev of his immunity, as a former president, from investigation or prosecution in June 2019.

In August that same year, after a long standoff, violence broke out at Atambayev’s residence outside Bishkek. The incident ended with Atambayev being arrested and he has spent most of the time since then in detention or prison.

Ousted

Askar Akayev was Kyrgyzstan’s first president. The obviously rigged parliamentary elections of February and March 2005 proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back and amid widespread protests he left for Russia on March 24, 2005.

Akayev has returned to Kyrgyzstan twice in recent years and some of the charges against him after he fled have been dropped. But it is clear from popular reaction to his brief visits that many people believe the only place for Akayev in Kyrgyzstan is a prison cell.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev was Kyrgyzstan’s second president. His government was more corrupt and nepotistic than Akayev’s.

Bakiyev fled in the April 2010 revolution. He went to Belarus where he has stayed ever since. Bakiyev also faces charges back in Kyrgyzstan and he has not returned there.

Dynasty

Dynastic transition is not new to Central Asia, but Turkmenistan’s father-to-son transition in March 2022 was the first since the five Central Asian countries became independent in late 1991.

Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, president from late 2006, called a snap presidential election that his only son, Serdar, won easily.

However, by early 2023, apparently Serdar was not meeting expectations and his father’s position as chairman of the Halk Maslahaty (People’s Council) was revised and he was given supreme powers of governing, putting the elder Berdymukhammedov back in charge of all important affairs of state.

Tajikistan is undoubtedly watching as for nearly a decade now, President Emomali Rahmon has been grooming his eldest son Rustam to take over as president.

Conclusion

The lessons, so far, of Central Asia since independence in 1991 show there is no graceful exit from power to leaders. Until a Central Asian president does manage to leave office and peacefully retire, the cycle of lifelong leaders is likely to continue.