Uzbekistan; New Election Rules Kick in Later This Year

Changes to the electoral system in Uzbekistan will take effect later this year, but it will take more than the appearance of democratic mechanisms to bring about political change, NBCentral Asia experts say.



A May 28 report on the news site 12.uz said the Central Election Commission had set out recommendations for the way polls are conducted, and made it clear that parliamentary and local elections would take place in December.



No date has been fixed yet, but under the terms of the constitution, local and national elections are due in the second half of December.



In line with legislative changes approved late last year, the lower house of parliament is to be expanded from 120 to 150 seats. The various legal political parties – all of them pro-government – will be able to compete for 135 seats using a proportional representation system. The remaining 15 seats will be given to the Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan.



Another change is that parties will be able to post agents at polling stations to observe the count.



Viktor Ivonin, an analyst based in Tashkent, says the reforms make sense, reflecting a cautious, incremental approach to political pluralism.



“Gradually implanting basic democratic values in people’s minds and introducing a new democratic culture to political life will produce positive results,” he said.



Others warn that the changes are merely cosmetic in that no opposition parties are allowed to exist, still less field candidates in elections. The small opposition in Uzbekistan is harassed and many members have fled abroad.



Farhad Tolipov, a political scientist in Tashkent, says they authorities routinely intervene to influence the conduct and outcome of polls, so it is difficult to believe promises by the Central Electoral Committee that this will not happen in the forthcoming ballot.



“Officials generally claim that the public mood is in favour of strong central authority,” he said. “They then translate this into tight control over the political process.”



Independent observers said the last parliamentary election, held in 2004, fell far short of international standards.



“This time round, too, there will be no avoiding the pressure exerted by the authorities,” Tashpulat Yoldashev, a political analyst now based outside Uzbekistan. “They will use the full range of instruments at their disposal.”



At the same time, Yoldashev says the electoral changes offer a glimmer of hope, in particular that proportional representation will encourage the development of political parties.



(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 has resumed, covering Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.)