The international human rights organization Freedom House has published a new annual democracy rating in the so-called Nations in Transit 2020, which include former European and Asia socialist countries.
The Democracy Score evaluates the state of democracry based on seven indicators, including national democratic governance, electoral process, civil society, independent media, local democratic governance, judicial framework and independence and corruption.
In all the aforementioned indicators Turkmenistan scored 1 out of 7 possible scores with the same lowest average score (representing the lowest possible level of democracy).
Compared to the previous year, Turkmenistan has changed its score for the worse by 0,04.The reason is the policy of succession planning pursued by the authorities.
It appears that President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov will appoint his 38 y.o.son Serdar, who has had numerous positions in public service over a short period of time, as his replacement.
The neighbouring Central Asia countries also ranked at the bottom of the list and were referred to as countries with “Consolidated Authoritarian Regimes”:
Uzbekistan received a score of 1,14, Tajikistan 1,18, Kazakhstan 1,32 and Kyrgyzstan 1,96.