Concerned with his regime fate in the background of the Arab Spring, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov announced in July that there will be "a free and fair election in Turkmenistan in accordance with the Constitution as well as the UN and OSCE international electoral standards". As surprising as this announcement was, the Turkmen Parliament has now followed up on the President's call setting the date for the next presidential election for February 12, 2012.

What is more, both Parliament and President have publically stated that anyone who is a citizen of Turkmenistan, was born in Turkmenistan, is at least forty year old of age and no older than seventy year, speaks the state language, and has been a resident in the country within the past fifteen years is eligible to run for elections "including exiled opposition groups".

Whether or not the upcoming election will turn out to be relatively free and fair is hard to tell. Nevertheless, state's call for elections ought to be welcomed with a sense of optimism given Turkmenistan's urgent need for more innovative and critical thinking and thus reduced ideological restraint if it is to deal with its myriad social, economic, and political problems successfully.

In spite of the initial optimism in 2007, when the current President came to power, education is still paralysed by ideological dogmas and is focused more on "indoctrinating than teaching". Although there is no substantial shortage of teachers, the quality of the teaching is extremely low. Schools are thought to be overcrowded, while country's highly centralised system of textbook printing has proved unable to adjust to the annual changes in demand, thereby leading to a shortage of textbooks in the country.

Situation is even worse when it comes to higher education. There are simply not enough universities to meet the growing demand with only 4,000 university slots for around 20,000 contenders. Initially, the government sought to address this issue by launching a scheme for students to study abroad. However, this initiative has not taken off yet because officials are worried that the political system will not be able to absorb the returnees who have been exposed to (western) liberal values. 

Healthcare, on the other hand, is "divorced from reality and unable to grapple with the true extent of existing problems". Although luxurious hospitals with state-of-the-art equipment are pumping up like mushrooms in the capital, it is not at all clear how these facilities will be sustained due to the drastic shortage of nurses and doctors. In 2006, for example, there were only 249 doctors and 449 nurses per 100,000 people in Turkmenistan. And to make matter worse, the majority of the existing personnel lack adequate skills to actually operate the newly bought sophisticated equipments simply because political loyalty is prioritised over merit and expertise.

Last but certainly not least, Turkmenistan has been seeking to achieve energy self-sufficiency so to export more of its gas to the growing markets of South Asia. However, Ashgabat failure to put in place meaningful free market mechanisms in its energy sector and the subsequent lack of foreign investment could soon result in domestic power deficit as the Soviet built infrastructure deteriorates and state subsidies and oversight "run the sector into the ground". As a matter of fact, power outages are becoming worryingly frequent which could eventually cause public unrest. As for the transportation system, suffice to say that the best roads are in Ashgabat and its immediate surrounding areas with conditions of roads elsewhere "distinctly worse".

To be sure, current shortcomings have many causes and that it would be naïve to blame them all on the government. As part of the Soviet Union, for instance, Turkmenistan was tightly woven into a single system of "republics" creating various forms of economic and political interdependencies which have proven difficult to unravel. After all, the collapse of the USSR left a political vacuum that had to be filled by states without necessarily having the resources and the experience for doing so.

Yet 20 years of independence and not a single systematic approach to widespread poverty, corruption, and socio-economic mismanagement clearly indicate that there can no longer be business asusual in a country with the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world. While officials have been determined to make full use of the rights and prestige given to occupants of high offices, they have miserably failed to fulfil their responsibilities as public servants. 

As such, stakes are high for Turkmenistan. The rapid deterioration of infrastructure and the resulting decline in basic services will deepen poverty and public disaffection with the state. This could empower Islamic radicals and indeed bring the regime to its knees as was case in Kyrgyzstan in April 2010. Thus, upholding an even semi-democratic election is certainly a right move in the right direction since it could help to inject some fresh thinking into the state apparatus by enabling new actors to enter the political arena. So here is for hoping that it will take place!