Kyrgyzstan: More Talk of Political Reform

CABAR

The Central Asian Bureau for Analytical Reporting is a project of IWPR

Friday, 11 December, 2015

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Plans for another overhaul of Kyrgyzstan’s political system were shelved over the summer, but now they seem to be back on the agenda.

President Almazbek Atambaev revived the idea of changing the constitution in a November 6 speech, and two senior politicians voiced broadly similar views this week, suggesting that a consensus is beginning to take shape.

Over the summer, a package of constitutional amendments was hotly discussed in Kyrgyzstan, amid controversy over plans to make local government heads and top Supreme Court judges appointed rather than elected. (See Constitutional Tinkering in Kyrgyzstan.) At the end of June, the president called for the bill to be withdrawn from parliamentary consideration pending further consideration and revision.

In his November address to a parliament elected a month earlier, Atambaev indicated that although the constitution passed in 2010 significantly increased the power of legislators at the president’s expense, it did not go far enough.

“Five years ago, we chose parliamentary rule, but in reality, we don’t have it,” he said. “We still have one foot in the parliamentary system and the other in presidential rule.”

Atambaev made it clear which way he thought things should go.

“All in all, we must somewhat reduce the president’s powers and start shifting to genuine parliamentary rule,” he said. “Otherwise our people will suffer.”

Atambaev’s remarks were couched in general terms and did not go into specifics. 

Two weeks later, Azimbek Beknazarov, a former ally of Atambaev and now an opposition parliamentarian, tried to fill in some of the gaps by suggesting that the real plan was to ensure that future presidents were selected by parliament than by the electorate. This would allow the governing elite to pick “its own man”, he said.

This claim was rejected by Omurbek Tekebaev, leader of the Ata Meken party which is in coalition with Atambaev’s Social Democrats. In an interview published by AKIpress news agency on December 8, he said that “certain politicians” had totally misread the president’s remarks, and that changing the way the head of state was elected was out of the question. As a system, parliamentary selection of presidents belonged to “the last century”, Tekebaev said.

Another veteran politician, Felix Kulov, weighed in on December 9 when he outlined his own reform plan which, like Atambaev’s, proposes taking power away from the president.

“Kyrgyzstan must not be dependent on one person,” he told a press conference.

However, Kulov has a different proposal for how presidents should be elected. This would involve a kind of electoral college consisting of all members of parliament plus “representatives” from Kyrgyzstan’s administrative regions.

Kulov’s Ar Namys party was formerly in the governing coalition with the Social Democrats and Ata Meken, but it failed to surpass the threshold needed to win seats in the October 4 parliamentary election.

Atambaev was elected in 2011, a year-and-a-half after his predecessor Kurmanbek Bakiev was forced to flee in the face of a popular uprising.

In his November speech, he cited the last administration as a warning of what could happen when there was too much power at the top.

He warned parliamentarians that if the presidency was not further weakened, it was “extremely likely that someone like Maxim Bakiev will become leader, someone who will likewise treat Kyrgyzstan as his own private corner-shop, regard his people as a herd of sheep, and start robbing businessmen”.

Maxim Bakiev, the former president’s son, acquired a considerable business empire when his father was in power. Both are abroad, and are wanted by the current Kyrgyz authorities.

Some analysts interviewed by IWPR believe when Atambaev alluded to “rich” individuals elsewhere in his speech, he was alluding to Omurbek Babanov, a businessmen and one-time prime minister who is now co-leader of the Respublika Ata Jurt party. Although Respublika Ata Jurt came second in the October parliamentary election, it was not invited to join the governing coalition.

GOING FOR CONTINUITY

Atambaev’s six-year term in office finishes in 2017, and the current constitution rules out a second term, even with a break between them. “No individual can be elected president twice,” it says.

A reduction in the president’s powers will thus affect his successor.

Some politics-watchers believe that the intention is to perpetuate the power of his Social Democratic party even after he leaves office. The Social Democrats emerged from the October parliamentary election without an absolute majority, but still as the leading players in a four-party coalition government.

Giving parliament substantially greater power and leaving the president as more of a figurehead is likely to make for continuity rather than the abrupt regime changes that Kyrgyzstan has experienced twice – in 2010 with Bakiev’s ousting, and in 2005 when his predecessor Askar Akaev was forced to flee by a similar “revolution”. Another former Soviet republic, Armenia, passed similar changes to its constitution in a nationwide referendum held on December 6.

Political analyst Emil Juraev believes that constitutional change – as long as it happens in the next two years – can only be to the advantage of the president’s party.

“Atambaev is planning to leave his post, but like every departing president, he’s going to be concerned about who comes after him,” Juraev said. “Given the environment in Kyrgyzstan where there’s a record of past presidents being persecuted, and where vengeance is a feature of politics, he’s concerned about whether the new president will be hostile towards him.”

Edil Baisalov, a former presidential adviser who is critical of the current government, argues that like his predecessors, Atambaev has come to see himself as indispensable.

“I see the same old failing that our presidents have had in common. They used to say, “People don’t know or understand that there’s no one superior or better than me. After me, you’ll all go to hell in a handcart,’” he said. “His idea of getting everything under his own control comes from a realisation that his own [choice of] candidate would be unlikely to win. So now he’s campaigning for constitutional change.”

Begaly Nargozuev, an opposition-minded former parliamentarian, says the 2010 constitution passed after Bakiev’s removal contains all the reformist provisions that are needed.

“He [Atambaev] should give parliament and the cabinet back the powers vested in them by the constitution. Then Kyrgyzstan really would take a huge step towards parliamentarianism,” he told IWPR. “If Atambaev intends to build a genuine parliamentarian system, the current constitution is adequate for that purpose.”

Marat Kazakpaev, a political analyst from Bishkek, disagrees, arguing that the 2010 constitution leaves a lot to be desired in terms of clarity about who holds the real power in Kyrgyzstan.

“The president has to take a lot of decisions because of the lack of professionalism among legislators. But now he’s proposing to move completely to parliamentary rule, to curb the president's power and to make parliament more professional. He wants to make it clear that after he leaves, it’s parliament rather than the president that is the main arena for politics.”

This publication was produced under two IWPR projects, Investigative Journalism to Promote Democratic Reform, funded by the European Union; and Strengthening Capacities, Bridging Divides in Central Asia, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.