The singing president who disappeared
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Turkmenistan's authoritarian president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow mysteriously vanished for a few weeks, while his country faced economic crisis. Then he reappeared. What happened?
Ed Butler asks what is going in this Central Asian nation, considered one of the world's most secluded after North Korea. The president's life and superhuman deeds normally dominate state television, so did his brief disappearance from the airwaves herald ill health or a fall from power? If so, who might succeed him? And how will any new leader tackle the gas-rich country's cash crisis and food shortages?
The programme includes interviews with Bruce Pannier of Radio Free Europe, Rachel Denber of Human Rights Watch, Ruslan Myatiev of Turkmen.news, and Adam Hug of the Foreign Policy Centre.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow performs his song Karakum on state television; Credit: Hronika Turkmenistana via YouTube)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Coming up, the president who went missing and then turned up again, the mystery of Turkmenistan's vanishing leader. |
| 0:12.2 | When he did finally appear on TV, he looked pale, he'd lost weight. He didn't seem to be totally focused on conversations he was supposedly having with people either. |
| 0:21.4 | So it did appear that something had happened to him. |
| 0:24.2 | Yes, all eyes on Central Asia's most mysterious nation today |
| 0:28.0 | and the growing economic misery of its people. |
| 0:31.4 | There's food shortage in Turkmenistan at the moment, |
| 0:34.2 | lack of flour, lack of bread. |
| 0:37.2 | Last year we had a shortage of chicken legs. People were lining |
| 0:41.4 | up every morning to buy a kilo or two of the imported chicken legs. That's all to come in Business |
| 0:47.2 | Daily from the BBC. What's not to like about a president who goes on TV with his grandson |
| 1:09.0 | and sings about the glories of his nation. |
| 1:12.6 | Here is a poem and flowers and trees. Here is the music in mountains and sea. |
| 1:17.6 | Beautiful sides of rivers and sky. All other beauties in Turkmenistan. |
| 1:22.5 | Deityathe's joshed, barredo'roman. |
| 1:26.8 | Yurban, gulash, jadeh, Moulajian, Goulajian, Edithi, Dijirin, |
| 1:29.3 | Jani, Turkmenistan, Turkmenistan. |
| 1:33.3 | That musical offering comes to the world thanks to Gourban Gouli Berdi Mukhamadov, |
| 1:37.3 | Bairdi, for short, to some of his Western fans, who, along with his grandson there, Keren Guli, he's the English speaker, |
| 1:45.6 | is banging out this rap song, clearly with one eye on a global fan base. |
| 1:54.1 | Singing, though, isn't the only one of the President's skills. |
| 1:59.3 | Oh, no, by no means. |
| 2:02.4 | He also appears on TV, |
... |
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