Turkmen newlyweds to get president's manual for free

Link : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040929/323/f3kmj.html


ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan (AFP) - Turkmenistan's prolific President Saparmurat Niyazov is so keen to disseminate his latest volume of "spiritual advice" that couples will get a free copy when they marry, a state official said.

The 500-page second volume of the Spiritual Guide, written by the self-proclaimed Father-of-all Turkmen (Turkmenbashi), is to be handed to all couples marrying in the country's registry offices, a senior official at the city administration of the capital Ashgabat said.

The book dwells at length on the responsibility of parents to bring up respectful and well-behaved future generations.

"Restoring family values is one of the main priorities of our national revival in this golden century," Niyazov writes in the book, which has just been published and is being distributed not only to newlyweds but to schools across the country.

The earlier first volume has already supplanted Marx and Lenin to become compulsory reading for every school and university student in this desert former Soviet republic. It is also studied by adults in the workplace and is part of the national driving test.

Niyazov has ruled with an iron hand since he graduated from being this desert republic's last Soviet-era leader to its president in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.

"Young people will see this wonderful gift as something of lasting value that they will keep all their lives as a spiritual and moral guide for the family," the city official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Niyazov has outlawed all criticism of his "national revival," a phenomenon based largely on the personality cult he has built around himself -- evident from the pictures and golden statues of himself and his parents located throughout this natural gas-rich country of some five million people.