What is the Constitutional Dispute About?

One of the central concerns raised in the Kyrgyz opposition protests which continued for a second day on November 3 is constitutional reform. NBCentralAsia commentators say addressing this key contentious issue could help avoid an escalation in the confrontation.



Demands for constitutional reform have been made for the last year and a half by critics of President Kurmanbek Bakiev’s administration, which rode into power on the back of the March 2005 revolution. One of the main demands the opposition Movement for Reforms has put to Bakiev is that constitutional amendments should be introduced without delay.



On October 31, two days before the opposition rally, opposition representatives had two private meetings with the president, one of which was devoted to the constitutional question. It was later announced that Bakiev had agreed to send a draft of the constitutional amendments favoured by the opposition for parliamentary review on November 2. This version sets out a vision of a parliamentary system in which the president has the right to dissolve the legislature only if its members fail to reach agreement on the composition of the government.



The president is believed to have given his verbal assent to a parliament consisting of 105 members, 70 of them drawn from party lists by proportional representation, and the rest from single-mandate constituencies. The legislature currently has 75 members, all elected for a five-year term from territorial constituencies, using the first-past-the-post system.



However, on the morning of November 2 - before the rally got under way - President Bakiev announced that he would be presenting the draft constitution to parliament only on November 6. The reasons he gave were that there was still disagreement about the various constitutional drafts in circulation, and that members of parliament were unhappy that a hasty decision should be taken on the basis of a meeting held behind closed doors.



Kubatbek Baibolov, member of parliament, leader of the Union of Democratic Forces, and a member of the Movement for Reforms, says the main bone of contention is who the government should be accountable to, in other words who gets to dismiss it and form a new cabinet.



The two most important constitutional questions are, he argues, how heads of state are elected and how governments are held accountable. “We have already agreed on one of these issues: the president should be directly elected by popular vote… But there is no agreement on accountability for the cabinet,” sid Baibolov.



In the present situation, he added, “neither side is listening to the other, so it is really up to the authorities to make a move. The sides need to talk, to start another round of negotiations.”



Aziza Abdrasulova, who heads the Kylym Shamy NGO and is involved in the Movement for Reforms, is convinced that the confrontation will end if the president sends a constitutional draft to parliament. “I think that if Bakiev submits a draft constitution on November 6, tensions will be defused and the protest will stop. There’s a real opportunity for consensus here,” she said.



Valentin Bogatyrev, vice president of the Vostok think-tank, said that once the contours of a constitution have been agreed, the next task will be deciding how to get it approved – either by means of a referendum or by a parliamentary vote.



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