Uzbek Party Merger Counts for Little

A merger between two pro-government parties in Uzbekistan has few implications beyond demonstrating that the entire political environment is an artificial construct, NBCentralAsia analysts say.



On June 20, two of Uzbekistan’s five legal parties – Milli Tiklanish and Fidokorlar – got together for a joint congress in the capital Tashkent. The outcome was a merger where the new party will retain the former’s name, which means National Revival, and be headed by Akhtam Tursunov, chairman of the former Fidokorlar (“Self-Sacrifiers”).



As one member made clear during the congress, these parties, which number more than 100,000 members, are similar, with aims that include patriotism and Uzbek cultural values.



The five – or now four – parties represented in parliament are loyal to President Islam Karimov’s regime. This is hardly surprising, as all of them were created by Karimov one after another.



Over the years, they have taken it in turn to be the president’s favourite, but despite each one proclaiming a new approach when it first emerged, they are in practice indistinguishable and are largely inactive between elections.



During the December 2007 presidential election, the candidates these parties put up actually lobbied voters to back the incumbent.



The People’s Democratic Party, PDP. is the oldest of the five, emerging from the Communist Party to become Karimov’s political vehicle in the early Nineties. The Adolat (“Justice”) Social Democratic Party and the Milli Tiklanish Democratic Party were set up in 1995, perhaps to dilute the PDP’s numerical domination of parliament and allow Karimov to explore different political vehicles.



Fidokorlar was the president’s next creation, set up in 1998. For a time, it was the top party – a merger with another group making it the biggest parliamentary faction in 2000, and it was Fidokorlar that nominated Karimov when he was re-elected that year.



However, in 2003, a usurper appeared in the shape of the Liberal Democratic Party LDP, which proceeded to win a majority in the December 2004/January 2005 parliamentary election. It was, logically enough, the LDP that nominated Karimov for last year’s election.



The opposition parties enjoy no legal recognition. The older ones, Erk and Birlik, operate only underground and their leaders are in exile. The newer Ozod Dekhkonlor (“Free Farmers”) party has not been granted official registration and its members are systematically persecuted.



Against this background, news that the regime is reshuffling its parties came as no surprise to NBCentralAsia’s Uzbekistan-watchers.



Farhad Talipov, a political analyst in Tashkent, said the merger would lead to no tangible change in the political and social structure of one of the world most closed countries.



“The entire Uzbek party system is an artificial construct. There is no competition among the parties, either in everyday life or in politics, or at any other level,” Talipov told NBCA.



Tashpulat Yuldashev, a critic of the government, argues that all the official parties were set up by Karimov to create a “façade of democracy”, as part of a pretence that the country enjoyed political pluralism, a multiparty system and a diversity of opinions.



According to Yuldashev, this latest political shift is merely for public consumption. It may also have been prompted by the more down-to-earth motive of reducing government spending on the maintenance of political party bosses, offices and publications.



He added that they might as well merge all the parties into one, as it would not change a thing.



Oleg Sidorov, an adviser with the Central Asian Fund for Democratic Support based in Kazakstan said the merger was reminiscent of what had happened in his own country.



In the run-up to the parliamentary elections in Kazakstan last year, the number of parties was reduced through mergers. The dominant Nur Otan party swallowed up the Asar, Civic and Agrarian parties. The constitution was changed to raise the threshold for parties entering parliament, and Nur Otan duly gained total domination over the legislature.



“It seems Uzbekistan is copying what was done in Kazakstan – the creation of a single powerful party. It is possible that the authorities will change the constitution; they always copy adopt each other’s methods in our countries,” said Sidorov.



The next parliamentary election in Uzbekistan is scheduled for autumn 2009.



(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment.)