Analytical materials
“In recent years, Tajik opposition activities abroad tend to intensify. This became especially visible after a substantial part of fault-finding politicians emigrated to Europe. In their activities, these groups have very limited means for achieving goals,” political analyst Khursand Khurramov notes in his article written for CABAR.asia analytical portal.
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Article Overview:
- Tajik opposition reunites. This is the second consolidation after the end of the civil war;
- Today, the political potential of the Tajik opposition alliance is limited to social networks and virtual space;
- The list of priority requirements of the National Alliance includes the protection of human rights, restoration of rights and freedoms for all political forces, as well as ensuring free elections in Tajikistan.
Opposition figures in Tajikistan attempted to unite for the second time after the end of the civil war to achieve political goals. Despite this event was held outside the country, the mere fact of the unification of certain opposition groups actualizes the issue of necessity to study its activities, motives and political perspectives.
In early September 2018, on the eve of the 27th anniversary of the independence of Tajikistan, four Tajik opposition groups announced their unification in the capital of Poland: “National Alliance” (including the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRP), “Movement for Reforms and Progress”, “Forum of Free-Thinking Citizens of Tajikistan” and “Association of Central Asian Migrants in Europe”.
Since the acquisition of independence, the relationships between the opposition and the authorities of Tajikistan remain very complex and controversial. The process – from armed confrontation for power (1992-1997) to signing a peace agreement (1997) and giving the opposition 30% of seats in the government, and then gradual displacement opposition groups from the political field, up to recognition of the main opposition party (IRPT) as terrorist in 2015 – very vividly illustrates this struggle done by the principle of “the winner takes it all”.
Apparently, over time, the main triggers of the Tajik opposition politics remained unchanged. When creating the new “National Alliance”, the Tajik opposition leaders abroad tried to ensure the regional balance as much as possible, and all of this happens again with the active support of the IRPT (banned in Tajikistan). The declaration of the new coalition creation was signed by Alim Sherzamonov, a native of GBAO, Sharofiddin Gadoev, a native of the Khatlon region, Mukhiddin Kabiri, Chairman of the IRP, and Ilhomjon Yakubzoda, a native of the Sughd region (northern Tajikistan).
It seems that this approach aims to achieve at least the following goals:
- demonstration of protest potential of all regions of the country to Dushanbe and external observers;
- regional formation of the groups of solidarity to the creators of the alliance;
- establishing cooperation with countries that are wary of IRPT after its official ban;
- minimization of the Islamic factor through participation of the maximum number of secular figures in the union
The last issue is particularly sensitive for the IRP management, since this party has accessed a relatively large audience due to religious ideology over the past years. At the same time, there is an understanding of “contempt” for political Islam, both from secular citizens of Tajikistan and from international (US, Russia and China) and regional (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan) actors.
Time will show whether Kabiri will be able to reverse the direction of the party to secularity. However, now he now emphasizes in his statements an exclusively secular future for Tajikistan.
It should also be noted that the recently created alliance does not include all existing opposition groups outside Tajikistan. “Group 24” and the Congress of Constructive Force abstained from joining the coalition, thereby protesting against the presiding IRP.
The head of the Congress and the leader of the political movement “Vatandor” declared an information war to the IRP, noting that the current party leadership by Muhiddin Kabiri is “ineffective and incapable of successful political management.”
Existing Potential
As for the possibilities of opposition groups in terms of identifying their supporters, they are almost completely limited. Before the official announcement of IRP as a terrorist group in 2015, its chairman said that the party has up to 42 thousand members. This figure cannot be confirmed now, since the party itself officially announced the cessation of activities on the territory of Tajikistan, and later was completely banned.
Opposition politicians in emigration are actively speaking at the annual OSCE conferences on the human dimension and are trying, to lobby the sanctions list through European institutions; this list consists of officials, who, in their opinion, are involved in human rights violations. In regional history, a similar precedent took place in 2005 after the Andijan events, when the EU imposed sanctions against several officials from Uzbekistan, but these sanctions were temporary. The published sanctions list by international human rights organizations in September 2017 is the result of the opposition activities. This list featured the name of the chairman of the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan Saymumin Yatimov. He was blamed for the torture of Mahmadali Khait, deputy chairman of the IRPT.
The National Alliance declares the struggle for building a democratic, legal and secular society in Tajikistan, for respecting human rights, restoring rights and freedoms for all political forces, and fight for fair and competitive elections in Tajikistan. The initiators do not speak about the means of achieving their goals, but given the possibilities of the opposition, it seems that this is primarily all about the information struggle and the pressure on the authorities of Tajikistan through various international and European institutions. Time will show whether they will be able to achieve a result and how official Dushanbe will react to their activities.
Authorities’ Reaction
Considering the latest constitutional reform, in particular, the lowering of the age requirement for the presidency and the intensive career promotion of Rustam Emomali, it is obvious that the process of power transition has started in Dushanbe. The success of this transition depends on the stability of the political regime and on favorable external factors. Judging by the positive reviews of the capital residents, Rustam Emomali has almost succeeded in creating the image of an effective manager as mayor of Dushanbe on the domestic political level. This circumstance creates a favorable background for power transition and deprives the opposition of certain advantages. Nevertheless, the existing political regime has a number of problems and unsolved issues, including the problem of human rights inadequate protection, unresolved social and economic problems, high unemployment rate, corruption, increasing national debt, etc. These chronic problems of the country cannot be solved in the short period. Therefore, for an effective power transition, Dushanbe can either use repressive mechanisms, or choose for a certain liberalization, including a dialogue with the opposition. Judging by the latest decisions of the authorities, certain liberal steps to improve the image are already being taken. These could include the release of journalist Khairullo Mirsaidov, lawyer Shukhrat Kudratov, lifting the travel ban on opposition family members, inviting the opposition to the negotiations during the OSCE Human Dimension Conference.
Conclusions
Tajik opposition activity abroad in recent years in fact tends to intensify. This became especially visible after the ban of IRPT and the emigration of a significant number of its members to Europe. Despite this, opposition groups have very limited means for achieving goals, because the absolute majority of Tajikistan citizens do not have access to social networks and new information spaces, and the republic’s authorities can filter the information to some extent.
In addition, any demonstration of a sympathy for these groups is can lead to criminal prosecution, since almost all of them are included in Tajikistan to a list of terrorist and extremist organizations. Nevertheless, the unresolved important socio-economic problems of Tajikistan and reliance solely on repressive methods may attract more attention to the activities of the opposition abroad and contribute to their popularization.
Obviously, despite certain liberal steps were taken, under the existing conditions, the political regime in Dushanbe does not intend to engage in dialogue with the opposition, since their confrontation has become too mutually exclusive. Such a prerogative, perhaps, will be passed on to the next contender for power if the family power transition happens successfully and the opposition is not able to counter it.
This article was prepared as part of the Giving Voice, Driving Change – from the Borderland to the Steppes Project implemented with the financial support of the Foreign Ministry of Norway. The opinion expressed in the article does not reflect the position of the editorial board or the donor.
“The role of the state – political leaders and various institutions – must be to promote public dialogue, sustainable diversity in the society and accept this diversity as a value. The state must prevent, not worsen, any divisions between insiders and outsiders, “us” and “them”. This is what can make our current social situation, not Soviet any more, secular,” political analyst Emil Dzhuraev wrote in his article for the analytical portal CABAR.asia.
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“In assessing the role of parliament, we should take into account the country’s historical experience, traditions and values, level of political and legal culture of the population and other circumstances. Consideration of such factors is the main prerequisite for assessing the role and place of the parliament both in the system of public relations and in the system of state legal relations,”- states Sheradil Baktygulov, expert in public administration, wrote in his article for CABAR.asia.
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Brief overview of the article:
- The quality of the Kyrgyz parliament performance depends not only on its members, but also on its administration and other state bodies that submit motions to the parliament;
- In the parliament of Kyrgyzstan, just like in other parliaments of the world, MPs are conditionally divided into three groups: “politicians” (3-8 people), “workers” (10 to 20 people), and “speechless” (the rest). “Politicians” determining the legislative agenda and “speechless” MPs, which constitute the majority, voting for any draft laws that are potentially beneficial for them make the difference;
- The composition of parties in the parliament depends on two groups of voters during election: pensioners and public-sector employees, whose loyalty is “paid for” by the increase in pensions and wages;
- MPs make up various groups of private interests, which affect negatively the society: they create unequal opportunities of various social groups when making political decisions, encourage inefficient economic policies and arrogate the exclusive right to represent public interests;
- The divergent trajectories of goals and objectives of MPs, officials and businessmen and of the expectations of socially mobile and economically active citizens are the factors contributing to the growth of the re-Islamisation of the population and the radicalisation of young people;
- Improving the efficiency of Zhogorku Kenesh performance depends on the self-discipline of MPs and the active participation of young people in elections. If young citizens of the country fail to become the most active, and thus influential, group of voters, the emerging negative trends will only gather pace.
In 2020, Zhogorku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Republic will be celebrating ten years of its work under the new 2010 constitution, with new powers of the legislative and executive branches of government. The majority of comments by local and foreign media agree that MPs fail to cope with their duties successfully. Fewer people claim successful parliamentary reform and performance of MPs. The discussions are logical, but how true are they?
In assessing the role of parliament, we should take into account the country’s historical experience, traditions and values, level of political and legal culture of the population and other circumstances. Consideration of such factors is the main prerequisite for assessing the role and place of the parliament both in the system of public relations and in the system of state legal relations.
There’s one more circumstance that affects the assessment of the Kyrgyz parliament significantly. It is based on the parameters of some “perfect” Western parliament, which doesn’t exist in the world. Also, there’s no second Kyrgyzstan or a country with the similar history, traditions and values to carry out a comparative analysis. We can only make hypotheses that don’t always reflect the real life.
The time of realism
The development of national representative bodies in the political system of modern Kyrgyzstan has a centuries-old history – from the tribal and national kurultais to the Soviet rule of people and modern forms of parliamentary democracy. It should be noted that the current Zhogorku Kenesh has been working for eight years only within the powers defined by the constitution of 2010 and 2017.
It’s more complicated in real life. The Kyrgyz parliament has passed through many ups and downs in its development: from the “legendary” parliament to the “fish (silent)” parliament; from the unicameral to the bicameral parliament and back; from MPs elected on the majority-proportional basis to MPs selected from party lists.
The practice is that MPs are blamed for the weak performance of the parliament and MPs. However, the effectiveness of the work of MPs, among other things, depends on the work of units that ensure the work of the parliament (departments of committees, administration, administrative department), as well as units of state bodies involved in the legislative process.
The analysis of performance of public authorities and administrative bodies in the field of law-making suggests that the “fool-proof system” (protection from unreasonable decisions) has never been developed.
Let’s consider an example of laws on mandatory insurance of movable and real property. The State Service for Financial Market Regulation and Oversight at the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic (hereinafter, Gosfinnadzor) submitted two draft laws in May 2015 to the Kyrgyz parliament saying that they would “increase responsibility of owners of movable and real property, reduce the burden on the budget in terms of assistance provided to those affected, drivers would depart the country with insurance policies.” This part of the background statement is just a bag of words that confirm the truism like “the sun shines brighter in the afternoon,” “it’s snowing in winter, raining in autumn,” etc.
Despite this, MPs conducted three readings of these two draft laws, “On mandatory insurance of private premises from fire and natural disasters” and “On mandatory insurance of civil liability of owners of motor vehicles”, at a record speed of 10-12 working days and passed the laws that legalised the withdrawal of cash from the pockets of the Kyrgyzstanis, including abroad.
Meanwhile, Gosfinnadzor violated the law “On laws and regulations of the Kyrgyz Republic”. It didn’t conduct compulsory hearings with the business community, compulsory Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA), introduced the conflict of laws (which is forbidden by law) in terms of tariff determination. The fact that these draft laws were drafted in 2009 for Bakiev’s “schemes” of cash withdrawal from pockets of citizens remains behind the scene. Therefore, the controversial draft law was introduced in May 2015, when legislators and staff of Zhogorku Kenesh, government, president and Ministry of Economic Affairs (responsible for RIA) lived in expectation of summer vacations. Moreover, it was the year of regular parliamentary elections.
Lawmakers and officials of Kyrgyzstan have developed a practice that all laws passed in the previous convocation remain there. However, the majority of MPs are re-elected to a new term, yet citizens have to suffer from the controversial initiatives of officials without hope of remediation of the situation.
Moreover, no one has ever conducted the analysis of RIA supporting the draft law. Opinions of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the administrative office of Zhogorku Kenesh are limited to the citation of sections and chapters required by the approved RIA methodology. Besides, this form of opinion is legalised by statutory regulation. Somewhere in the depths of Zhogorku Kenesh there is a regulation on compulsory expert examinations (anti-corruption, gender-based, human rights, environmental, etc.), yet almost no draft law has ever been examined.
The similar situation is seen in some laws passed both at the initiative of MPs, and on the motion of government authorities. Overall, certain elements of “fool-proof system” do exist, yet they make any protection of citizens impossible or they are simply ignored. In the modern history of Kyrgyzstan, no one has ever been held liable for such violations, rather officials keep on taking their offices, getting promotions and government awards, receiving dividends from businessmen and other pleasant “surprises.”
Divergent trajectories
In the parliament of Kyrgyzstan, just like in other parliaments of the world, MPs are conditionally divided into three groups: “politicians”, “workers”, and “speechless”. Depending on the parliament size, there can be about three to eight MPs-“politicians.” These people are rather active, often appear in the media, and are known to the majority of population. Their performance factor is based on the number of their speeches within the parliament, in the media and during round-table discussions.
MPs – “workers” are not so widely known to the public, yet they are known to experts because such legislators work at draft laws. This category of legislators adds value to the parliament. There are about 10 to 20 of such legislators, yet they are not the ones who make the difference within the parliament.
“Politicians” determining the legislative agenda and “speechless” MPs, which constitute the majority, voting for any draft laws that are potentially beneficial for them, make the difference. In Russian practice, they are called a “bog”, and in Kyrgyz practice, they are called “fish” (“balyk deputat”).
In Kyrgyzstan, interest groups affect adversely the functioning of the political system because they are the agents of private, not public influence on political decision-making. Everything that is happening in Kyrgyz politics is a result of machinations of various business groups, corporations, etc.
Negative influence is caused by the following circumstances:
First, similar interest groups create unequal opportunities for various social groups in political decision-making, in particular, by exempting them from income tax, facilitating soft loans for land plots and their transformation, expedited movement of goods through customs border, etc.
Second, such groups encourage inefficient economic policies: “influential” interest groups in fact impede the reallocation of resources and changes, which leaves people in need without support. This situation can be observed in the banking sector. Microfinance companies established to assist the poor and extremely poor have actually opened banks for citizens with average-for-Kyrgyzstan incomes for grants received. Sadly enough, the process has been headed and launched by the citizens of countries declaring assistance (by the example of Grameen Bank) to the poorest social groups and allocating grants to this end. A formal resemblance is that they started as microfinance organisations and then turned into banks. However, there’s a world of difference between them – the poor in Kyrgyzstan has never become the middle class. Moreover, MPs have had to respond firmly to the massive devastation and impoverishment of the middle class who have found themselves in debt to microfinance organisations. Thus, new banks have emerged by arbitrary decision.
Third, interest groups arrogate the exclusive right to represent public interests. The very principle of representation is being perverted and is limited to the deals of interest groups and public officials (including MPs). Interest groups tend to represent themselves rather than citizens. Thus, if legislators work in the parliament, their children, nephews, brothers and sister, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers work in local administrations, state administrative bodies, and run family businesses. The similar monopoly is peculiar to non-democratic political regimes, which means the end of democratic transition period.
The divergent trajectories of goals and objectives of MPs, officials and businessmen and of the expectations of ordinary people are the factors contributing to the growth of the re-Islamisation of the population and the radicalisation of young people. The people’s discontent with their situation is channelled to the parliament and the government that have turned into the symbols of instability and inefficiency, although it is just a result of activity of interest groups longing to monopolise the representation of public interests.
What can be done?
Every country’s parliament has overlapping and complex political, regional and individual ambitions. Therefore, a parliament can become a democratic authority only if its MPs and officials serve to ensure the territorial integrity and people’s welfare. In this case, the parliament and civil society organisations act as real guarantors of individual, human and citizens’ freedom.
After the 2010 constitutional referendum in Kyrgyzstan, the value of political parties in the life of the state has significantly increased. The new variety of the party system affects the organisation and activities of the whole state mechanism and its key state legal institutions: elections, parliament (composition, alignment of forces, relations between parliament and government, etc.).
The expanded activities of the government are accompanied by the growing impact of career officials at local levels. The increasing number of statutory instruments issued by the government beyond the parliament’s control often distorts the laws already adopted. It creates the new relations between the parliament and the government.
One more trend should be noted – current interest groups use mechanisms of direct influence on state institutions less frequently, and often try to influence public opinion.
Improving the efficiency of Zhogorku Kenesh performance depends on the self-discipline of MPs and the active participation of young people in elections. If young citizens of the country fail to become the most active, and thus influential, group of voters, the emerging negative trends will only gather pace. In this case, Kyrgyzstan would be seen as a country with family-clan regimes in local administration.
We have already received political and image dividends from the strengthened powers of Zhogorku Kenesh as a result of constitutions reforms of 2010 and 2017. Now we’d like to see practical and economic dividends for the country and its citizens, rather than for certain businessmen and their companies.
This article was prepared as part of the Giving Voice, Driving Change – from the Borderland to the Steppes Project implemented with the financial support of the Foreign Ministry of Norway.
“Another failure of regional cooperation and its turning into formal meetings of the heads of states will lead to a complete loss of Central Asian identity and position in the world arena as an independent geopolitical subject,” expert Yury Sarukhanyan wrote in his article specifically for CABAR.asia.
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“In connection with the growth of religiosity and conservatism in Kyrgyzstan’s population, gender discriminatory practices unfortunately become normal despite the fact that official policies and formal norms say otherwise” – states Chinara Esengul, Ph.D. in an article for CABAR.asia.
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“If Atambayev weighs the whole course of events leading to an extremely unprofitable situation for him, he can identify for himself a few of his mistakes. For Jeenbekov, these errors by Atambayev can be relevant lessons at an early stage of his presidential term” – notes Emil Juraev, writing specially for CABAR.asia.
“For a long time, analysts in Uzbekistan existed not to critically analyze events and foster development of new proposals but rather to confirm and consolidate the country’s already established political and economic course” – notes expert Nazima Davletova in an article written especially for CABAR.asia.
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“Occupying sixth place in the world for natural gas reserves and having at least five promising gas export routes, today Turkmenistan exports in only one direction – the Chinese one. This sees about 30 billion cubic meters flow annually to China” – states expert Ruslan Izimov in an article written especially for CABAR.asia.
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