An Official Vision for Kyrgyzstan

As the Kyrgyz government drafts a set of principles designed to unite the nation and strengthen the sense of citizenship, some NBCentralAsia observers are questioning whether the country's rulers are capable of producing a viable national philosophy. Others wonder whether a democratic society actually needs to have an official ideology at all.



In early March, a government working group completed its draft of a document called “Development Through Society”, as a basis for what is being described as the “national idea”. The document is to be submitted to President Kurmanbek Bakiev for review.



Speaking at the working group session, State Secretary Adakhan Madumarov said, “We have deliberately moved away from the term ‘ideology’ and used the phrase ‘national idea’ instead. There won’t be any dogma, and things may need to change over time. The document isn’t a regulatory legal act; instead, it seeks to have an impact on public awareness.”



The draft talks about values like statehood, national unity, the nation, the nature of power, the supremacy of the law, the country, patriotism, the individual, liberty and the economy.



Gulnara Iskakova, an expert at the Centre for Political and Legal Studies, is by and large a supporter of having an ideology.



“There needs to be some idea that is shared by the majority of Kyrgyzstan’s citizens, who would exert influence through elections, and their elected representatives would in turn articulate the common aspiration for this particular idea,” she said.



Iskakova went on to argue, however, that Kyrgyzstan’s current political elite does not listen to the views of the intellectual elite, and the state itself promotes private interests rather than the common good. Therefore, she said, “the state is not in a position to design a national idea that a majority of the population would subscribe to”.



Kyrgyzstan’s ombudsman Tursunbay Bakir Uulu believes it will be hard to come up with a set of values that are acceptable to most people.



“When atheists think up an ideology, I just have to laugh. The most powerful ideology of all, designed by the Communists, has fallen apart… and now some ideology that descends from on high is not going to be taken up by all the different peoples who live in our republic,” he said.



Most of Kyrgyzstan’s population is Muslim, and there are about 80 different ethnic groups.



Other observers say there is no need for a common national idea at all, since ideology and democracy are incompatible and mutually contradictory.



“It is impossible to have an ideology in the age of information; it’s a false form of consciousness,” said Larisa Khoperskaya, a professor of political science. “People need to be able to think things out for themselves without ideologists, otherwise they can forget about democracy.”



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)