Uzbekistan Heads for Constitutional Revision

On March 14, senators in Uzbekistan’s parliament – the Oliy Majlis – finally set a date for the constitutional referendum. By the time of the vote on April 30, nearly 18 months will have passed since Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev stressed the need for constitutional revision in his inaugural address on November 9, 2021.

Back in 2021, Mirziyoyev was as vague as he was adamant. He characterized constitutional reform as “in demand by life itself and dictated by the logic of our transformations.” 

“As world practice shows, constitutional reforms were carried out in many states during a period of cardinal changes. Therefore… we must carefully consider the issue of improving the Basic Law, which determines the current and future development of the country.”

A few weeks later in a December 7 Constitution Day speech, Mirziyoyev laid out his ambitions. He said strong “constitutional foundation” was necessary to fully carry out his development plans and laid out a broad set of nine general proposals ripped off a Soviet-era development plan. As I summarized at the time:

He said it was necessary to replace the principle of “state-society-person” with “person-society-state.” He said that the main criteria in the process of economic reforms ought to be to “ensure human interests” and that the role of civil society institutions should be consolidated in the constitution. Mirziyoyev proposed defining the constitutional foundations of “the family” and “traditional human values” alongside strengthening interethnic harmony. He also nodded to a need to reflect youth policy in the constitution, as well as increase protections against child labor and ensure the rights of the disabled and elderly. Mirziyoyev said that it was important to consolidate at the constitutional level the development of schools from kindergarten to higher education. 

Listed as the sixth proposal but arguably of a separate character, Mirziyoyev said “the time has come” to enshrine the “New Uzbekistan – a social state” principle as a “constitutional norm.”

In essence, there is no “New Uzbekistan” – the defining mantra of the Mirziyoyev era – without constitutional changes. But the road to constitutional reform proved bumpier than anticipated. 

The first draft of the proposed revisions to the constitution was released in June 2022, with a scheduled 10-day public consultation period. But it sparked such a backlash in Karakalpakstan that the entire endeavor was delayed for nearly a year.

That first draft included the surprising removal of provisions that guaranteed the autonomous republic’s right to secede from Uzbekistan. That particular right exists more on paper than in reality. Of those charged in relation to the violence that unfolded in early July in Karakalpakstan, the heaviest sentence was handed down earlier this year to well-known journalist and lawyer Dauletmurat Tazhimuratov, who was charged, paradoxically, with “conspiring to overthrow the constitutional order” for his role in organizing protests against the proposals to revoke Karakalpakstan’s right to do exactly that. 

Mirziyoyev moved swiftly last summer, flying to the capital of Karakalpakstan, Nukus, in early July and announcing that those specific changes would be scrapped. The constitutional reform process then went into a kind of hibernation, with the state taking in proposals from the public but saying very little about a timeline.

In December 2022, RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service reported a government source suggesting the referendum would be held in the spring, after the Nowruz holiday in late March. And, indeed, in early March the final draft was released and date announced.

According the Uzbek president’s office, more than 200,000 proposals were submitted by the public. The draft envisions a dramatic ballooning of the constitution from 128 articles to 155. A reported 65 percent of the constitution has been “updated,” per government reports. Uzbek citizens have been given less than two months to process a significant revision of the constitution before being asked to vote on it.

Perhaps the most meaningful change in the constitution is a replay of an old Islam Karimov gambit: Adjusting the length of the presidential term via a referendum, which serves to nullify previous terms served and open the door to perpetual rule. Mirziyoyev’s “New Uzbekistan” in this vein looks very much like a replay of the Karimov era.

Back in April 2015, after Karimov had won yet another election, I wrote an article titled “Karimov, Uzbekistan’s Perpetual President” in which I summarized his ability to run in endless elections despite nominal “term limits.”

In 1990, Karimov first came into office as president of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. He then won handily Uzbekistan’s first election as an independent country in 1991. In 1996 he extended his term via referendum and was reelected in 2000 to a seven-year term. He delayed the 2007 election by a technicality until December, and then won despite a two-term limit in the country’s constitution. The argument then was that his 1991 election did not count as one of his two “consecutive terms” because it was before the current constitution was put in place in 1992.

In 2011 Karimov oversaw a change in the constitution, which shortened the presidential term to five years… Karimov may be able to win perpetual presidential terms, but… he will not live forever.

Karimov died in late August 2016 and Mirziyoyev took his place. He was elected in a snap election held in December 2016 and secured a second term in October 2021.

The final draft constitution includes the lengthening of the presidential term to seven years again. Various government figures, most notably Sodiq Safoyev, the deputy speaker of the Uzbek Senate, have made it clear that if a new constitution were approved, it would reset the clock on Mirziyoyev’s presidential terms. 

“Let’s say it openly, if the new constitution is adopted, then it will, of course, enable all citizens, including the current president, to take part in elections under that new constitution,” Safoyev said in an interview last summer. “If the president will choose to seize that opportunity or not depends first and foremost on him and the party that nominates him. But he will have the right.”

Mirziyoyev’s current term runs to 2026, but the constitutional referendum, as a similar referendum in Kazakhstan last year did, presents the opportunity for a snap presidential election at a time of Mirziyoyev’s choosing. In any case, with the presidential term extended to seven years and two new terms open to him, Mirziyoyev could very well remain in power until 2040.

This is, of course, one small piece of the constitution, but one of tremendous importance. So far in Uzbekistan’s modern independent history, the man (and it has always been a man) at the helm matters more than the fine print in the constitution – Karakalpak activists in jail for doing things technically allowed to them under the constitution know this well. The declaring of Uzbekistan as “a social state” and what RFE/RL reported as the “tripling [of] the state's obligations to citizens” are simply words on paper if the mechanisms to hold power to account – elections and courts – are undemocratic, lack independence, or otherwise ineffective. 

Mirziyoyev has not said a word about seeking re-election, but no one will be surprised when he does. He will have secured his vision of a “New Uzbekistan” with the referendum later this month, and there is little doubt that it will pass. But nothing will be truly new in Uzbekistan’s politics until a president willingly steps down and aside.