Delegates attend a session of Turkmenistan's Halk Maslakhaty (People's Assembly) in the capital, Ashgabat. Photograph: Michael Steen/Reuters
It has been a bleak week for foreign journalists trying to cover this weekend's elections in Turkmenistan, the gas-rich central Asian state.
The desert-dominated country has been in a state of paralysis since the death in December of the country's megalomanic leader Saparmurat Niyazov.
In the past Niyazov would personally decide who got a visa. Now, though, the hundreds of applications from journalists trying to cover Sunday's polls - including the Guardian's - have simply sat in a box at the Turkmen embassy in Moscow. Not, though, that there is much doubt who is going to win the election - Turkmenistan's acting president Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov.
Berdymukhamedov, a close adviser to the late president, has said he would follow Niyazov's 'course'. But most western observers believe that Berdymukhamedov will not try and imitate the extraordinary personality cult of his predecessor, who presided over one of the world's most oppressive and bizarre dictatorships.
Niyazov styled himself Turkmenbashi the Great, renamed airports, towns and a meteorite after himself and members of his family and even changed the name of the month April to that of his mother.
"It's impossible to be worse than Turkmenbashi. Any hopes of change in Turkmenistan are easy to justify," Alexey Malashenko, a scholar at Moscow's Carnegie institute believes.
Turkmenistan watchers have recently detected signs of what may be a thaw. One report suggests that the 49-year-old Berdymukhamedov was recently spotted campaigning in a marketplace. (Given that there are few photos of him this report is hard to confirm.) He was seen shaking hands with voters, a bit like an ordinary western-style politician.
He has promised health and pension reforms. He has also reportedly allowed two jailed members of the former government to be moved from prison to house arrest. Berdymukhamedov may also ease restrictions on Internet access, some experts believe.
In terms of foreign policy, the new president is expected to try and improve relations with the US and western Europe - from which Turkmenistan has been long cut off. Foreign states are greatly interested in events in Turkmenistan because of its vast natural gas reserves, the world's fifth largest- with all gas exports currently routed via Russia.
But there is little prospect that the new president will allow exiled opposition leaders back into the country. And nobody believes any kind of meaningful democracy will emerge inside it. There are five other candidates running in Sunday's presidential poll. (They include a provincial electrician. Berdymukhamedov is himself a former dentist.) But they are not expected to win.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has sent a team of observers but they won't be issuing a report.
Given all this don't be surprised when the acting president romps home on Sunday with more than 90% of the vote. Sadly the visa-less Guardian won't be there when it happens.
