Uzbekistan leader Islam Karimov is in critical condition after having suffered a stroke, the country’s Cabinet confirmed,”Narodnoye slovo” newspaper reported. Russian news agencies, meanwhile, quoted unnamed sources in Tashkent denying the reports of Karimov’s death.
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Rumours have swirled over the president’s condition since officials first said that he had been hospitalised, with opposition media based outside the very tightly controlled Central Asian nation claiming that he has already died.
Karimov, 78, suffered a brain haemorrhage on Saturday according to his daughter, and the Tashkent government has since remained silent about his condition, prompting speculation that the veteran authoritarian leader may have died.
Instead the frontrunners to take over long term are believed to be Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, known as a tough-guy enforcer, and Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Azimov. Karimov’s elder daughter, Gulnara, was initially being seen as a potential successor but is out of the reckoning after being placed under house arrest in 2014 following a family feud.
The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee has extended his greetings and felicitations to the Government and people of the Republic of Uzbekistan on the eve of their Independence Day (September 1, 2016). Gulnara accused her father of being like Stalin and accused her mother and sister of sorcery. He became president in 1991, after the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
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Most seriously the authorities have been accused of killing hundreds of protesters in the eastern city of Andijan in 2005.
