President’s daughter, 16, ‘new face of Tajik TV’

by Andy Sennitt.

The 16-year-old daughter of the president of Tajikistan started a new summer job this week, as a newsreader on national television, officials said yesterday. “The new face of Tajik television is the anchor Zarrina Rakhmonova. She is 16, one of the seven daughters of the Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon,” the head of TV Tajikistan’s news service, Khudzhanazari Aminien, told AFP.

The president’s daughter, who goes to school in Britain, is presenting a daily news slot in English on Channel One over the summer, the news chief said, adding that the Tajik channel broadcasts abroad on satellite. She will not be paid for her work, he said. “Zarrina is trying to get work experience.” Her work will last two months, Aminien said, after which she will presumably resume her studies

President Rakhmon has headed Tajikistan, the poorest of the ex-Soviet republics, since 1992. He has nine children, two of whom occupy political posts. His eldest daughter, Ozoda Rakhmonova, serves as deputy foreign minister, while his son Rustam, 23, was elected as a deputy for a district of Dushanbe in February this year.

President Rakhmon changed his surname from Russian-sounding Rakhmonov, but some of his children kept their original Russian-style surnames. In neighbouring Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov’s daughter Gulnara Karimova serves as the country’s ambassador to Spain as well as performing as a pop star, whose songs are rotated on state television.