Tajikistan's Ubiquitous and ‘Irreplaceable’ Leader

As in most other Central Asian countries, the portraits of the president are everywhere in Tajikistan. Blogger Rustam Gulov (aka Teocrat) believes [ru] that these portraits serve a political purpose:

[The portraits] are all parts of a giant machine designed to convince the people in Tajikistan that this person [the president] is irreplaceable. As a result, people develop a conviction that there are no other persons in the country who could be in a position to challenge ‘His Highness’ at the polls.

A giant portrait of the president mounted on the building of the Ministry of Agriculture in central Dushanbe. Image by Alexander Sodiqov, July 2013.

A giant portrait of the president mounted on the building of the Ministry of Agriculture in central Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. Image by Alexander Sodiqov, July 2013.

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