Uzbek farmers told to glue cotton back on bushes ahead of state trip

[Eugene]

Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Uzbek farmers told to glue cotton back on bushes ahead of state trip

Farangis Najibullah for RFE/RL, part of the New East network
Friday 16 October 2015 08.00 BST

When word came that the Uzbek prime minister would be driving past their village, local officials wanted to impress him with roads lined by snowy white fields of cotton.

The only problem was that the cotton had already been picked.

So, locals say, farmers were told to glue cotton balls back on the bushes to give an impression of a bountiful harvest of the country’s most important crop.

Ahead of the expected visit by the prime minister, Shavkat Mirziyaev, at the end of September, some 400 men and women in the village of Shaharteppa in Ferghana province were reportedly pressed into service along the main road where the official convoy was expected to pass.

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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/16/uzbek-farmers-glue-cotton-on-bushes

[exboyfil]

1. Potemkin village

A sign your system of government is in trouble.

[Journeyman]

2. And the harvested crop, piled high, wouldn't have given an equally optimistic slant to the bounty?…

"We piled the harvest in the fields around us, beneath the open skies," Abraham Lincoln's neighbors liked to say, "and what wouldn't fit we stacked in the barn."

[RGinNJ]

3. Their painting the roses red.