Turkmenistan went to the polls Sunday for tightly controlled local elections that were expected to vote in supporters of the president of the secretive Central Asian state.
Around three million people were eligible to vote in polls to elect local representatives, the electoral commission said in a statement, stressing the poll's "democratic nature", with several candidates standing in each district.
An observer from the country's State Institute of Democracy and Law told AFP that all the candidates were "devoted to the policies of the president." Polling stations in the ex-Soviet state on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea were decorated with portraits of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who was shown casting his vote on television early in the morning.
The president took power after eccentric dictator Saparmurat Niyazov died in 2006. Niyazov famously renamed months of the year after himself and his mother and erected a golden statue of himself which rotated to face the sun. Berdyumakhamedov, a former dentist, toppled the golden statue in August this year, but observers have noted a budding cult of personality with giant banners of his face hanging on government buildings.