Kyrgyzstan: Too early to pass judgement on revolution

Tom Wood

It is currently fashionable to deny the gains made by Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution. Many of the charges leveled against the March 2005 uprising, however, are taken out of context or are greatly simplified.

Kyrgyzstan is an unprecedented example in Central Asia of a state challenging its modern history and political culture. The Kyrgyzstani revolution did not usher in Swiss-style democracy. Yet for the first time, the ability of average Kyrgyzstanis to influence politics has been accepted, a novel idea in post-Soviet Central Asia.

The revolution’s detractors present a consistent set of charges: Since the fall of former President Askar Akayev, political instability has been unleashed, popular discontent has increased and organized crime plays a larger role in government. Added to the mix is the charge that the revolution weakened Kyrgyzstan’s delicate geo-strategic position and exposed it to unwelcome attention from powerful regional players Russia and China.

These supposed outcomes are then used to explain neighboring Kazakhstan’s preference for a Singaporean model of non-democratization. "Evolution, not revolution," the new Kazakhstani slogan used to justify President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s authoritarian rule, is but faintly challenged inside the Washington beltway.

Kyrgyzstan has a long way to go before it becomes a democracy with an entrenched rule of law, but it is much further down that road than its wealthier neighbors. It is a weak state, but this does not equate with anarchy or looming civil war.

The revolution did not unleash forces leading to mass violence, but to presidential elections in July 2005 that can be characterized as broadly fair; albeit as more of a referendum on current President Kurmanbek Bakiyev than as a genuinely competitive race.

Admitttedly, Bakiyev is much weaker than many of his regional counterparts. He cannot, for instance, have someone arbitrarily thrown into jail, tortured or worse.

Unlike the opaque, constantly shifting political alliances of President Askar Akayev’s rule – alliances that ultimately alienated many key regional elites -- the Kyrgyzstani political formula is now characterized by greater transparency and consensus.

To build a sense of legitimacy, Akayev blended a nation-building ideology with the traditional Soviet recipe of strategic regional alliances. Bakiyev has continued the latter, but has presented the former as a task accomplished. One positive sign of this development, according to Coalition of Non-Governmental Organizations President Edil Baissalov: in many government offices, Kyrgyzstan’s state seal has replaced the mandatory presidential portrait of former days.

Another common accusation is that the revolution’s potential has been nullified by the government’s apparent inability to undo the constitutional arrangements rammed through by Askar Akayev to install a parliament loyal to his interests. The flawed February 2005 parliamentary elections, it is argued, were never reversed, thereby proving the worthlessness of revolutionary change.

To have dissolved parliament after the revolution, however, would only have eroded the new government’s dubious constitutional basis; a basis that was, as with most revolutions, essentially extra-legal and unconstitutional. Instead, in a delicate and potentially explosive situation, the Bakiyev regime adhered to a series of compromises. The interim government sensibly chose to work with the existing parliament in the knowledge that fresh parliamentary elections would very likely return the same set of local business interests, only more hostile at having to repurchase their seats.

One gain of the February elections was to destroy the parliamentary power of the Kyrgyz communist party, the main opposition force during the Akayev era, but a relative black hole for innovative thinking. There is now hope that an opposition can forge a genuine parliamentary coalition. The government strategy now is to pressure parliament by permitting a petition campaign for a referendum on parliament’s dissolution, while moving forward with a constitutional review. The process is controversial, but, so far, reasonably inclusive.

The likelihood of the mafia infiltrating a weak central government is another criticism brought against Kyrgyzstan’s post-revolutionary government. The brazen murder of several parliamentary deputies with well-known connections to organized crime shocked both the Kyrgyzstani public and the international community.

Organized crime in politics is nothing new in Kyrgyzstan, however, and dates far back into the Akayev era. What is new is the unraveling of deals once held between major criminal groups and the former regime; much of the recent violence is related to mafia families settling internal disputes and jockeying for position.

While such fights are more visible amidst the greater transparency of post-revolutionary Kyrgyzstan, they do not represent a sudden upsurge when seen as part of a larger trend. Nor are they a threat to the state, as the ease with which the authorities suppressed a recent series of mafia-inspired jailhouse protests demonstrates.

Foreign policy, another frequently cited weak point, is an area where the national interest is served quite well by an establishment inherited from the Soviet Union. These officials have successfully crafted a coherent Kyrgyzstani foreign policy based on the need to integrate Kyrgyzstan into the international community as a small state. The current foreign minister, Alikbek Dzhekshenkulov, a former ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and presidential advisor on foreign relations, is unlikely to change this.

Kyrgyzstani foreign policymakers are not dilettantes, but people the West would be well cautioned to take more seriously – as evidenced by their skill at assuaging Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) concerns about the US-leased air base at Manas and retaining an American military presence at the same time. The fact that pressure is on the Bakiyev government from Russia and China about the base only indicates that the US has failed to suggest a security framework sufficiently compelling to induce Kyrgyzstan to abandon its commitment to the SCO.

This is not to deny that there are very serious issues with the Bakiyev regime sitting a little too comfortably on the presidential throne. The ultimate outcome of March 2005 remains to be seen. Kyrgyzstan is hardly a model, but nor should it be used as a justification for continued authoritarian rule elsewhere in the region.

Editor’s Note: Tom Wood, Ph.D. is a program officer for Kyrgyzstan with the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES). The views stated herein are solely those of the author and in no way reflect or represent IFES and its work.

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