The eldest daughter of Uzbek President Mirziyoyev has continued to climb the ladder of power in recent years, in fact reaching the highest position after her father, thus confirming the “tradition” of the Central Asian countries.
Tashkent () – The eldest daughter of the President of Uzbekistan, Saida Mirziyoyeva, 39, has been in power for five years, and in that time she has continued to climb the ladder of power, reaching the highest post after her father Šavkat, to whom she is an adviser and first assistant. She has long been considered the heir to the throne of Tashkent, although there is no shortage of other contenders in the presidential family, considering after all that with the changes introduced last year in the Constitution, Mirziyoyev, 67, could remain in office for another 14 years, exceeding a quarter of a century after the first elections in 2016.
Saida is the first of three siblings, and in April 2019 she took up the post of deputy director of the Agency for Information and Mass Communication, a role that immediately placed her among the key assets of the presidency. Although she had previously kept away from politics, in 2023 she was officially proclaimed her father’s first assistant, “a dizzying political takeoff,” as the well-known Uzbek journalist Džakhongir Mukhammad comments, “an unknown suddenly becoming the second authority in the country.”
Since then, her presence on the public scene has been constant and increasingly striking, with meetings at the highest level and reception of foreign delegations, visits to regions and representation of Uzbekistan abroad. Last month, Saida travelled to neighbouring Kazakhstan, where she met with President Kasym-Zomart Tokaev on the eve of her father’s official visit to Astana. The example of the Central Asian countries is very evident, starting with the Turkmen presidential tandem of father and son Berdymukhamedov, Gurbanguly and Serdar, and Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon also seems to be going down the same path with his son Rustam Emomali.
The family lineage of power guarantees the protection of all members of the clan, many of whom have amassed great fortunes in recent years. “Uzbekistan is a dictatorship, where the first family controls the government and the entire country,” says former diplomat Ališer Taksanov on Radio Azattyk, considering that “almost all of Mirziyoyev’s relatives are in power”, including in the secret services and in the business world. The latest confirmation in recent days is the appointment of the president’s brother-in-law, Otabek Umarov, husband of his youngest daughter Šakhnoza, as vice-president of the Olympic Committee for Central Asia at the 44th assembly in New Delhi, an appointment of indefinite duration and with very wide-ranging powers, also involving Iran and Afghanistan.
The head of the Paris-based association for Human Rights in Central Asia, Uzbek Nadežda Ataeva, believes that Saida Mirziyoyeva’s activities are currently “preparation for assuming the presidential role,” and that at every public meeting the daughter and heiress appears more and more self-confident, it is “a kind of course of study for career advancement.” According to Ališer Ilkhomov, director of Central Asia Due Diligence in London, 40-year-old Umarov could, however, compete with Saida for the top seat, as he is also accumulating posts, being also deputy chairman of the National Security Service.
Otabek accompanies the president on all his trips and is his main bodyguard, drawing from this role “access to enormous levers of influence,” says Ilkhomov. Thanks to his family connections, he has accumulated great wealth and is considered the mediator between the political and economic spheres of the country, manoeuvring “behind the scenes.” There would therefore be a hidden competition between the two suitors, which would be accentuated by the confrontation with another forty-something, Komil Allamžonov, a representative of the Information Council very close to the president’s daughter, who accused Umarov of undue interference in the Uzbek business world. Saida also has the protection of her father-in-law, General Batyr Tursunov, 72 years old, father of her husband and businessman Ojbek and first vice president of the Security Council, from where he supervises his young colleague Umarov, in a power game all within the presidential family.
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