Kyrgyzstan's Fifth Constitutional Referendum Passes

Yesterday, October 21, 2007, the Kyrgyzstani people went to the polls to vote on a new Constitution–for the fifth time.  Previous referendums occurred under President Akaev in 1994, 1996, 1998, and 2003–the last one, combined with perceived/gigantic election fraud of 2005, sent Akaev into exile in the Russian Federation.  This will be Mr. Bakiev's first referendum–and for the sake of national stability, we should all hope that it's a good one.

However, not everyone is pleased with the new Constitution, saying that it is in places self-contradictory.  There's some background on the poor planning at the Central Asia Beat and more background at neweurasia.net. Asel has done a great job of collecting local blog voices on the constitutional dispute (and its relation to daily life and corruption).  Mirsulzhan has written two articles in Russian that are linked there as well. 

According to AFP, state officials noted an 80% turnout for the vote.  75% of the turnout voted for the new Constitution; 3% voted against.  Local officials had received the word to get the vote out for a good referendum.  Some human rights watchers were noting ballot stuffing in the Bishkek area.  The OSCE did monitor the election, and we are looking for the reports.

Today, President Bakiev dissolved Parliament.  Though some news reports are reporting differently, Central Asian experts and Kyrgyzstan's opposition leaders are saying that the Constitution gives greater power to the executive branch of government.  The new legislative elections will occur on December 16th.  Then new Constitution allows for proportional representation rather than a plural vote.

According to Wikipedia:

Proportional representation (sometimes referred to as full representation), is a category of electoral formula aiming at a close match between the percentage of votes that groups of candidates (grouped by a certain measure) obtain in elections and the percentage of seats they receive (usually in legislative assemblies). It is often contrasted to plurality voting systems, where disproportional seat distribution results from the division of voters into multiple electoral districts, especially “winner takes all” plurality (FPTP) districts. 

Various forms of proportional representation exist, such as party-list proportional representation, where the above-mentioned groups correspond directly with candidate lists as usually given by political parties. Within this form a further distinction can be made depending on whether or not a voter can influence the election of candidates within a party list (open list and closed list respectively). 
 

At any rate, it seems that politicians would like to concentrate on something besides political impasse–good choice– because Kyrgyzstan's stability has been compromised since before the Tulip Revolution of 2005.  Mr. Bakiev has said he would like the government to work on economic development.  However, between political impasse and economic development there are several other qualities that need to be developed.  One would be transparency, which benefits both political and economic development.  And it should be noted that the combination of political privilege and economic opacity is what brought the Tulip Revolution in the first place.

Stay tuned for legislative campaigns in Kyrgyzstan . . .

Photos: CIA Factbook, Jamestown.org