Uzbek President Islam Karimov has been hospitalized after suffering a brain hemorrhage, according to the longtime strongman’s daughter, Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva.
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“I would also like to use this opportunity and to thank all of you with all from the bottom of my heart for your kind, honest and encouraging words of support and wishes for our president’s speedy recovery!”
Karimov, 78, became the Communist Party leader in Uzbekistan in 1989, when the territory was still part of the Soviet Union.
“Karimov and his inner circle have managed to build such a system of state power in Uzbekistan which will remain functioning irrespective of the life or death of the first person”, Russian political analyst Alexander Knyazev said.
At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Unio, n he had been nearly two years at the first secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, and moved smoothly into the role of the independent republic’s first president.
“I think in the corridors of power they have already started fighting”, Rabbimov said, while predicting the elite will be keen to ensure the transition is “more or less stable”.
A day earlier, the Cabinet of Ministers published a cryptic statement saying that Karimov had been hospitalized and “would require a certain amount of time for medical assessment and treatment”.
It’s been 25 years since Karimov is ruling the central Asian nation. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan over the years has been affiliated with the Taliban, al-Qaida and the Islamic State group and its fighters active outside the country, but how much presence it has in Uzbekistan is unclear.
His eldest daughter Gulnara had been seen as a possible successor but is out of favour after accusing her mother and younger sister of sorcery and comparing her father to Stalin on Twitter.
Had a senior official been allotted the task, the choice of speaker may have identified a likely successor.
Moscow has expressed its concern over Karimov’s state of health.
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Meanwhile, Regnum news agency reported that police and security forces have formed a cordon around the government hospital where Karimov was being treated.
