# Wacky Country Leaders **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 19, 2008, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451 "2008-06-19T08:18:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![eddiestafford](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/779978/32.png) [@eddiestafford](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eddiestafford)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/1 "2008-06-19T08:18:54Z")
Hello everyone, I wondered if you could give me a list of mad world leaders who are in power today (other then Mugabe and Kim Jong), especially those who I may not have heard of before? I know the leader of Gambia claims to be able to cure HIV - anymore examples like this? Thanks, Eddie ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/2 "2008-06-19T08:56:02Z")
[Mswati III of Swaziland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mswati_III_of_Swaziland) is a bit of a character. He’s got 13 wives. There’s a traditional yearly ritual called the Umhlanga (Reed Dance) where twenty to thirty thousand of Swaziland’s virgin girls dance topless. 1n 2004, the king chose a a sixteen-year-old reed dance participant and finalist from Miss Teenage Swaziland for a wife. He likes to spend money. According to Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > At a time when more than one third of the country was HIV+, and more than one third of the population was at risk of starvation, King Mswati attempted to use $45 million of the government’s money to buy a private jet. The amount was equivalent to the amount the government spent on health care for the whole country in a two-year period. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/3 "2008-06-19T08:56:34Z")
Lukashenko, the president of Belarus is pretty odd. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/4 "2008-06-19T08:57:43Z")
I don’t think classifying heads of state into categories like “wacky” can be considered a factual question. ---
**Author:** ![eddiestafford](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/779978/32.png) [@eddiestafford](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eddiestafford)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/5 "2008-06-19T10:15:06Z")
Thanks for the answers so far. How about if I change the question to: which contemporary Heads of State have been criticized for their lifestyle (who are slightly more obscure then the likes of Kim Jong and Mugabe)? ---
**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/6 "2008-06-24T06:54:47Z")
[QUOTE=madmonk28] Lukashenko, the president of Belarus is pretty odd. [/QUOTE] Only if you consider holding on to absolute power wacky. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/7 "2008-06-24T07:22:53Z")
I nominate Nyazov, the leader of Turmenistan until a couple years ago. He had a huge golden statue of him erected in the capital, rotating so that it would always face the sun, changed the national day to his birthday, made mandatory in school the reading of his poetry (or something similar), etc… IOW, he tried to compete with Kim-Il-Sung/ Kim Jong Il for the cult of the personality world championship. [Nyazov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saparmurat_Niyazov) .See in particular the “presidential decrees” part of this wikipedia article. Also mentioned : > [@wikipedia](#): > > The Turkmen words for bread and the month of April were changed to the name of his late mother, Gurbansoltanedzhe ---
**Author:** ![WormTheRed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/bbe5ce/32.png) [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/8 "2008-06-24T13:01:02Z")
[QUOTE=clairobscur] I nominate Nyazov, the leader of Turmenistan until a couple years ago. He had a huge golden statue of him erected in the capital, rotating so that it would always face the sun, changed the national day to his birthday, made mandatory in school the reading of his poetry (or something similar), etc… IOW, he tried to compete with Kim-Il-Sung/ Kim Jong Il for the cult of the personality world championship. [Nyazov](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saparmurat_Niyazov) .See in particular the “presidential decrees” part of this wikipedia article. Also mentioned : [/QUOTE] My personal favourite 😉 He even set up mandatory yearly tests on his books. So you could be hauled off from the office and had to take the test - and if you failed? ☹ In addition he changed the weekdays to names of his family members. I wonder who got monday? ---
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/9 "2008-06-24T14:02:39Z")
I think [cracked.com](http://cracked.com) did a list on this some time back. ---
**Author:** ![Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hypnagogic_jerk/32/4252_2.png) [@Hypnagogic\_Jerk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypnagogic_Jerk)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wacky-country-leaders/453451/10 "2008-06-24T16:10:34Z")
[QUOTE=clairobscur] I nominate Nyazov, the leader of Turmenistan until a couple years ago. [/QUOTE] If we’re considering former world leaders, how about [Abdalá Bucaram](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdal%C3%A1_Bucaram), President of Ecuador in 1996 and 1997? He was known as “El Presidente Loco”, the crazy president, and I believe used the term himself. According to this article, he was eventually deposed because of mental disability, which makes sense, I suppose.