Meet Tajikistan's new newsreader - the President's little girl

As has been reported by the BBC and independent Central Asian news sources, the 16 year old Zarina Rahmonova (hmmm... how come she hasn't dropped the Slavic -ov ending from her surname like papa commanded??), one of the seven daughters of Tajikistan's president Emomalii Rahmon (formerly Emomali Rahmonov), currently studying in the UK, scored herself a summer job reading the news in English on state TV. No guesses as to who scored her the job. Am I really surprised? Not at all. As the BBC reports, Zarina's sister Ozoda is deputy foreign minister (free trips abroad and a diplomatic passport) while her husband is deputy finance minister (let's fiddle with the books). Zarina's brother Rustom was elected to the city council of Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe.

For Central Asian standards, this type of nepotism is standard. The daughter of Uzbekistan's president Islom Karimov, Gulnara, has done everything under the sun - she studied at Havard and has a PhD, is claimed to have extensive business interests in all of Uzbekistan's most lucrative and extensive businesses and industries, designs jewellry, has her own UNESCO charity fund (very Evita Peron), once was a pop star, hangs out with world famous celebs, and is now Uzbekistani ambassador to Spain (again, free travel, diplomatic passport and lots of celebs to party with). All this and she isn't even 40 years old! Thanks dad!

Kazakhstani president Nursultan Nazarbayev has three daughters, the eldest of which, Dariga, has her own political party which, surprise surprise, is supportive of her father's rule. She has plenty of business interests, loves singing opera arias (despite having no training, she often gets to perform them anyway at state functions) and was a judge on Kazakhstani Idol (she's just like Cheryl Cole - sorta). When she divorced her husband Rakhat Aliyev, supposedly on the insistence of her patron father, Aliyev quickly fled the country as the slow wheels of the Kazakh justice system went into Ferrari mode in bringing him to face the music.

Of course, you could be Ilham Aliyev, who became president of Azerbaijan after his father Heydar died in 2003.

Now, let's not kid ourselves here. Central Asia does not have a monopoly on nepotism. It's a worldwide phenomenon that occurs in varying degrees in all societies and at all levels. We can point fingers and say tsk tsk to Central Asia, but are the same parallels, and to the same extent, made of George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush? Think about it.