Thursday, May 24, 2012 -
Entrepreneurs and industrialists in the tightly controlled Caspian Sea state of Turkmenistan are attempting to build a new political party, a Turkmen trade paper said on Thursday.
The party would be the only party outside of the official Democratic Party.
The group published an ad in the privately owned Rysgal newspaper calling on interested citizens to join the party, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.
Turkmenistan, independent for 21 years, has been a one-party state for entirety of its existence as an independent country.
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has recently been calling for the creation of a second party, although few expect any new party to be capable of challenging the Democratic Party’s stranglehold on power.