So Farewell Then.... Turkmenbashi.

Saparmurat Nyazov, president of Turkmenistan also known as Turkmenbashi- The Father of all Turkmens, has died. So the world loses it's finest comedy dictator since the late Idi Amin, Nuazov's 'achievements included:

• Renaming Turkmen cities after himself and his family.
• Placing a gold-plated statue of himself on top of Ashgabat's largest building, the Neutrality Arch, that rotates so it will always face into the sun and shine light onto the capital city. Though as he himself said- "I'm personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets - but it's what the people want,"
• Naming months of the year after himself and his mother.
• Replacing the Hippocratic Oath with the Turkmenbashi Oath.
• Winning the Turkmen 'Hero of the year' award five times.
• Ordering the construction of an Ice Palace in the Turkmenistan desert.

Obviously for all his absurdity he wasn't much fun to live under. The grim comedy of Turkmenbashi was probably not unintentional as with Amin, but rather it was a way of reinforcing his power by saying to the Turkmen's by emphasising that they were so fearful they couldn't even laugh at things which they knew were preposterous.