The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty in June 1990 – just three months into Karimov’s first term as president – but it would take until September 1, 1991, for the nation to fully declare independence from the Soviet Union, which was dissolved almost four months later. Then in 1983 Karimov was the finance minister of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and in 1986 became the deputy chairman of the Uzbek SSR Council of Ministers, chairman of the State Planning Office.
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“Uzbeks have known for a long time that that moment would arrive, so no one would be surprised, but no one knows what will happen next”, said Scott Radnitz, an associate professor at the University of Washington told AFP.
His long rule and tight control have raised questions about succession and long-term stability in the Central Asian country of 28 million, which has never held an election judged free and fair by global monitors. The news has yet to be confirmed by the government, which insisted yesterday that the President was hospitalised but in a stable condition. He said most people are too afraid to talk about Karimov’s hospitalisation, such is the level of repression in the country.
He has not named a successor – at least publicly.
Under Uzbekistan’s constitution, the chairman of the Uzbek Senate takes over if the head of state dies.
If elections are held, the new president is expected to come from Karimov’s inner circle.
Mr Karimov was re-elected to a fifth term past year with more than 90% of the vote and there are concerns that he has no obvious successor in a country that has never held a fair and free election. Azimov regularly appears at Karimov’s side when he meets with foreign officials.
Karimov’s government has frequently been accused of human rights abuses, including forced child labor, the killing of unarmed protesters in a 2005 massacre in the city of Andijan and even boiling protesters alive. But there is little reason to expect either would radically change Uzbekistan’s internal politics, Rabbimov said. Uzbekistan has fiercely denied all the allegations against it. It is likely that all sides have a shared interest in avoiding open conflict, wrote Deirdre Tynan of International Crisis Group.
The major challenge for Karimov came when the the palace power struggle within his own family emerged in 2013.
Karimov’s second daughter, Lola, is Uzbekistan’s ambassador to Paris-based UNESCO.
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In a court drama with echoes of Shakespeare, the former Soviet apparatchik – at the helm since 1989 – reportedly had his eldest daughter put under house arrest in 2014 during a family feud in which she compared him to brutal Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.
