In
contemporary Central Asia, elections are as
much political theatre as contests for office. After the break-up of the Soviet Union in late 1991, most of the countries in the
region descended into one-man rule or civil war. The semi-competitive elections
held in the last months of the Soviet order gave way to elections of
acclamation in the first years of independence, with political power becoming
increasingly centralized in the hands of the founding presidents of the
republics. For a time it appeared that Kyrgyzstan might resist the
temptation of authoritarianism; however, by the mid-1990s its president had
begun to limit society’s ability to hold the state and its representatives
accountable.
The election
that brought to power the country’s first president, Askar Akaev, illustrates
the role of changing rules in shaping electoral outcomes. In the late Soviet
era, parliaments selected the head of state—the chair of the Supreme Soviet—in
each republic. In Kyrgyzstan,
the election law stipulated that if the Parliament failed to produce a winner
after two rounds of voting all the candidates would be disqualified. In October
1990, this quirk in the electoral rules allowed Akaev—a little-regarded Gorbachev
loyalist who was opposed to the dominant conservative forces in the Kyrgyz
Communist Party—to win the next round of the parliamentary election for head of
state of the Kyrgyz
Republic. The following
year, Kyrgyzstan,
like most other Soviet republics, introduced popular direct elections for a
newly-designed office of president whose powers supplanted those of the
collapsing Communist Party. In October 1991, just weeks before Kyrgyzstan
became an independent country, Akaev won the election for the presidency
unopposed. He won the two subsequent presidential elections—in December 1995
and October 2000—by wide margins in the first round, although widespread
violations were reported during both elections.
The rules
governing presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan are a mixture of
traditional and unconventional elements. Elections are held every five years
and are decided by a two-round majority run-off system: if no candidate
receives an absolute majority in the first round, the two candidates with the
most votes proceed to a second round, where the candidate with the most votes
wins. New elections must be called if less than half the electorate turns out
for either the first or the second round. Presidents may serve for no more than
two terms, although the Constitutional
Court in Kyrgyzstan,
unlike its counterpart in the Russian
Federation, made an exception for the
sitting president by ruling that his first term did not count because it began
before the limit of two terms was adopted in the 1993 constitution.
To stand
for president, a candidate must be at least 35 and not more than 65 years of
age. Candidates must also satisfy several further requirements. First, they
must undergo an examination by the Language Commission to ensure that they are
fluent in the state language, Kyrgyz. This requirement, introduced to
discourage Russians and Russified Kyrgyz from contesting the presidency, was
used in the 2000 election to disqualify Akaev’s most prominent challenger,
Feliks Kulov. Second, they must pay from their personal funds a deposit equal
to 1,000 times the minimum monthly wage—essentially the lifetime income of a
poor person. For the deposit to be returned, a candidate must receive 10 per
cent of the vote, and proposals now being debated by Parliament would increase
that to 15 per cent. A further barrier to entry is the requirement that a
candidate receive 50,000 signatures, of which at least 3 per cent must come
from each of the country’s eight territories—a provision designed to ensure
that a president has adequate support in both the north and the south, whose
elites have been at odds in recent years.
The
relative stability of the rules governing presidential elections in Kyrgyzstan
contrasts with the frequent changes made in the parliamentary electoral system.
Perhaps the most dramatic have been to the size and structure of the
Parliament. Independent Kyrgyzstan inherited from the Soviet era a unicameral
Parliament of 350 deputies who had been elected in February 1990 in
single-member districts using a two-round voting system. Following
constitutional changes made in 1994 by referendum—the president’s preferred
means of enhancing his powers and reducing those of the Parliament—this
unicameral assembly was replaced by a bicameral legislature, with 60 members in
the Legislative Assembly and 45 in the Assembly of People’s Representatives. In
the parliamentary elections of February 1995 and February 2000, the entire
Assembly of People’s Representatives and 45 members of the Legislative Assembly
were elected in 45 single-member districts using two-round voting. The
remaining 15 members of the Legislative Assembly were elected by List PR using
closed lists and a single nationwide district with a 5 per cent formal
threshold, that is, parties must secure at least 5 per cent of the total vote
nationwide to be represented in the Parliament. For the 15 PR seats, each party
had the right to put forward a list of 30 persons, and in cases where
candidates from the list also stood in single-member districts and won, their
names were removed from the party list.
The
reduction of the number of deputies from 350 to 105, ostensibly designed as a
cost-saving measure, facilitated presidential control of the Parliament by
trebling the size of the single-member districts and thus reducing the ability
of smaller parties to win seats. The presence of a handful of List PR seats in
the new Parliament did little to compensate for the disadvantages that a
diminutive Parliament posed for small parties.
Moreover,
the post-communist elections have returned parliaments whose composition
differed dramatically from that of the rubber-stamp Soviet legislatures.
Communist Party control of candidate nomination had worked in such a way as to
create bodies in which those who had passed the approval process comprised a
broad cross-section of society. In contrast, the post-communist assemblies in Kyrgyzstan
were almost exclusively male and had a disproportionate number of executive
officials and the newly rich.
Kyrgyzstan has recently changed the rules for
parliamentary elections again. Revisions to the constitution adopted by
referendum in February 2003 called for the 105-member bicameral assembly to be
replaced at the next parliamentary election with a unicameral legislature of 75
members. The new election law of January 2004, which has been much criticized
inside and outside Kyrgyzstan,
provides that the 75 deputies will be elected in single-member districts using
a two-round majority run-off voting system. Further reducing the size of the
Assembly and abandoning the party list seats is likely to reduce the
representation of minorities yet again, increase the executive branch’s
influence over the legislature and emasculate an already weak party system. It
may also strengthen the political salience of the regions by giving the central
party leaders less influence over the selection of candidates.
Because the
smaller number of seats in recent parliaments produced larger electoral
districts, it has been easier for ethnic Kyrgyz to win seats than for members
of ethnic minorities. Where the ethnic Kyrgyz majority is now over-represented
in the Parliament, the substantial Uzbek, Russian and German minorities are all
significantly under-represented. In particular, the Uzbeks hold a share of the
seats which is less than half of their share of the population.
In recent
years, the political opposition in Kyrgyzstan has found it
increasingly difficult to contest presidential and parliamentary elections. The
deference of the judiciary, the Electoral Commission and the Language
Commission to presidential authority has led to the selective prosecution and
disqualification of electoral candidates. Moreover, presidential influence on
the media has prevented the opposition from waging effective campaigns. In the
2000 presidential election, for example, President Akaev received almost ten
hours of coverage on the national television channel, KTR, while his principal
opponent received less than five minutes. One of the few sources of independent
reporting on electoral campaigns, the foreign press, is threatened with legal
sanctions if it criticizes establishment candidates. Voting irregularities are
also widespread. The conduct of elections as well as the changing electoral
rules has impeded the development of political competition in Kyrgyzstan.
For most of
the first decade of independence, elections to representative assemblies below
the national level were held in single-member districts using a two-round
voting system. Since 1999, however, regional and local assembly elections have
been conducted in multi-member districts using SNTV. Although the governors of
the country’s seven regions are still appointed by the president, the chief
executives of cities, districts and villages are now selected by the members of
the local assemblies. The sole exception to this pattern is the capital,
Bishkek, where the mayor is directly elected.
As in Georgia and Ukraine,
the manipulation of electoral rules and the conduct of elections ultimately
delegitimized the elections themselves, which contributed to the March 24, 2005
revolution in Kyrgyzstan
that overthrew the Akaev presidency and placed the newly elected parliament and
the entire system of electoral rules under review.
