A Tale of Two Elections

This year, four of five Central Asian states held elections. Two of those elections were for national parliaments – in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In the case of Tajikistan, the election marked the beginning of the seemingly final chapter for the country’s most notable opposition party. Months later, neighboring Kyrgyzstan held the region’s most democratic election to date. For neighbors with many of the same social and economic problems, their approach to politics couldn’t be more different.

Of all the states in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are the smallest and poorest. The two lack the massive hydrocarbon deposits that have buoyed the economies (and the regimes) of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and to a lesser degree Uzbekistan, and their mountainous terrain has limited their ability to build globally competitive agriculture industries, as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan have done with cotton. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are the two most remittance-dependent countries in the world. According to the World Bank, in 2015 remittances from migrant workers abroad – most of them in Russia – accounted for more than 40 percent of Tajikistan’s GDP. Kyrgyzstan wasn’t far behind, with remittances accounting for over 30 percent of GDP. David Trilling, writing for Eurasianet earlier this year, noted that “over a million Tajikistanis, or roughly one-half of working-age males, labor in Russia, along with about the same number of Kyrgyzstan’s citizens – approximately one-fifth of that country’s population.”

While the two are similar in economic struggles, their politics are vastly different. This divergence has roots in how their respective capitals managed sudden independence in 1991. Tajikistan experienced almost immediate upheaval and while Kyrgyzstan did not, it has succumbed to cyclical, though largely bloodless, revolutions.

In Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akayev, who had been elected president (or rather, selected by the Kirghiz SSR’s Supreme Soviet) in 1990 retained his seat in an uncontested election in 1991. He won (a loose term as neither election was judged to be competitive) reelection in 1995 and 2000. In 2003, Akayev set in motion a constitutional reform process which resulted in amendments that strengthened the presidency and weakened the parliament. Parliamentary elections in 2005, widely viewed as corrupt, sparked the protests that resulted in the largely bloodless Tulip Revolution, which carried Akayev out of power and Kurmanbek Bakiyev into the presidency. Bakiyev’s administration fell to protests in 2010, after he reneged on a promise to close the U.S. base at Manas and amid charges of massive corruption in his administration. The second revolution was marred by significant riots and violence in the south, targeting the minority Uzbek population.

Meanwhile, following independence Tajikistan fell almost instantly into a violent civil war that lasted five years and claimed as many as 100,000 lives, displacing more than a million Tajiks. The country’s first elected president, Rahmon Nabiyev (who had served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan from 1982 until he was ousted in 1985 over an alleged corruption scandal), was unable to consolidate his grip on power. He was soon replaced by Emomali Rahmon. Tajikistan’s civil war pitted the country’s communist elite against a broad coalition of democratic parties and Islamists. And while the establishment won out, the 1997 peace accord mandated that members of the opposition be brought into the government.

Parliaments across Central Asia are largely known as rubber stamp legislatures. Dominated by whichever party is associated with the president, they serve as a front for democracy in the region. Tajikistan fits that model, but owing to the 1997 peace accord did have limited room for opposition, legitimized by its presence in parliament. Kyrgyzstan, despite its periodic upheavals – or perhaps because of them – developed a parliament that isn’t dominated by a single party.

Tajikistan’s March parliamentary elections were the region’s first elections in 2015 and set in motion events that have only recently culminated in the decimation of the country’s largest opposition party – the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). In previous parliamentary elections – none of which have been judged free and fair – the IRPT was allowed to win two seats. Although two seats, out of 63, is a negligible amount of opposition at the very least it provided a legitimate outlet for dissent. In March, the IRPT failed to receive even a single seat.

The OSCE election observation mission noted in its final report that the election “took place in a restricted political space and failed to provide a level playing field for candidates.” The report noted that despite the government’s “ambitions to hold democratic elections” restrictions remained on freedom of expression, assembly, and access to media. Critiques leveled at media coverage of the election specifically cited negative reporting about the IRPT. State-owned broadcast media – the only media with nationwide coverage – overwhelmingly focused on covering state authorities rather than campaigns. The “elections were not administered in an impartial manner,” OSCE concluded.

Six months after the election in which the IRPT lost its meager two seats, the state finalized its purge of the party from the legitimate political sphere. The coup de grace, the state’s designation of the IRPT as a terrorist organization, came just as neighboring Kyrgyzstan carried out the region’s most democratic election to date.

Broadly Hyped, Deeply Scrutinized

Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary election, on October 4, was broadly hyped and deeply scrutinized. Fourteen parties ran and six cleared the threshold to enter parliament. While the party associated with President Almazbek Atambayev, the Social Democratic Party, captured the most seats (38) it did not win a majority and will have to form a coalition with at least one of the other parties. Kyrgyz politics are far from mature; the parties, for example, are more personality driven than separated by distinct differences in policy platforms. Still, despite a history of upheavals (again, perhaps because of this history) the Kyrgyz election was markedly more fair than any in the region. As Erica Murat, a well-known Central Asia analyst and assistant professor at the College of International Security Affairs at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C, noted in a timely commentary ahead of the election, “Kyrgyzstan has proven to be more stable and more transparent politically than neighboring states.”

The OSCE, which so harshly judged the Tajik election, commented in its preliminary report that the Kyrgyz election was “competitive and provided voters with a wide range of choice.” Concerns the OSCE did air were largely related to the election’s procedure – the use of a new biometric registration system to validate voters. The OSCE also leveled some criticism at Kyrgyz media for its lack of robust election coverage and for extensive positive reporting on the administration. The report notes, however, that “media provided contestants with a platform to present their views.” This was largely through paid-for reports – but the OSCE report does not indicate that specific parties were targeted or excluded.

Since the election in Kyrgyzstan the politicking has continued. As the voting was by party, the numbered lists are now critical for deciding who actually sits in parliament. Parties are reshuffling their lists, dropping candidates who, for some reason, have either refused to take their seats or signed pledges ahead of the election to withdraw. Ostensibly this movement is linked to how well parties did in areas tied to specific members. At least one candidate claims her party forged a letter in which she agreed to refuse her seat. While there have not been loud noises about the validity of the election as a whole, the process and practice of democracy is distinctly messy in Kyrgyzstan.

“Is Kyrgyzstan a democracy in the making?” Murat wrote ahead of election day. “Without launching into a debate on [the] definition of democracy, one can say that, at a minimum, Kyrgyzstan is not an autocracy.”

Tajikistan, on the other hand, is.

The 2015 parliamentary elections in Tajikistan marked the end of an era. Henceforth, even nominal opposition is not welcome. The crushing of the IRPT bodes ill for Tajikistan’s stability as the party formed a cornerstone of the peace accords. Meanwhile, the election in Kyrgyzstan set a new standard for the country and the region. The real test for Kyrgyzstan will come in 2017, when the presidency is up for grabs and the incumbent is barred, by current laws, from running.