Allies of Kyrgyzstan's president set to win snap parliamentary election

By Felix Light

BISHKEK, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan votes in a snap parliamentary election on Sunday in which allies of President Sadyr Japarov are expected to win a resounding victory.

A populist and nationalist, Japarov has since 2020 established firm control of Kyrgyzstan, which was traditionally Central Asia’s most democratic country. Victory for his allies would set the stage for a presidential election due in 2027, when Japarov is expected to seek another term.

"The current leadership is very motivated to maintain tight control, to prevent any potential sources of destabilisation, which we have seen throughout these five years," said Emil Juraev, a Kyrgyz political scientist.

CLAMPDOWN ON MEDIA AND OPPOSITION

After Kyrgyzstan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the lively political life in the mountainous country of around seven million became an exception in otherwise authoritarian Central Asia.

In 2005, 2010 and 2020, Kyrgyz leaders were ousted in street protests against elections critics said were rigged, while Kyrgyz media was for decades the region’s freest.

But since coming to power on the back of the 2020 protests, Japarov has clamped down on the media and opposition groups. An election had been due by November 2026 but parliament voted in September to dissolve itself for a snap election.

Edil Baisalov, Kyrgyzstan’s deputy prime minister and an ally of Japarov, said the president’s popularity was partly based on rejecting the turbulence of previous decades, which he said had not improved living standards or offered stability.

"The first 30 years we spent trying to copy," he told Reuters. "We thought that we would adopt a Westminster-style parliamentary system and that we would live like Western countries. But it did not work and it will not work."

Baisalov said the media crackdown, under which independent journalists have been designated "extremists", was required to protect Kyrgyzstan from what he said were negative sentiments fanned by foreign social media platforms.

Bolot Ibragimov, an opposition candidate seeking election in the capital, Bishkek, said he expected about 80% of the parliament, which is dominated by allies of Japarov, to be re-elected.

FASTEST ECONOMIC GROWTH IN CENTRAL ASIA

Japarov, who has backed banning online pornography and the return of the death penalty, is also bolstered by strong economic growth, the fastest in Central Asia, even as high inflation and electricity shortages erode living standards.

Economic experts say much of the boom is the result of Kyrgyzstan, which is in a customs union with Russia, becoming a key clearinghouse for imports to Russia redirected by sanctions over the war in Ukraine. 

Western countries have imposed sanctions on several Kyrgyz banks and cryptocurrency companies, accusing them of facilitating Russian sanctions evasion.

In the run-up to the election, Japarov has embraced ties with Russia, which has military bases in Kyrgyzstan and where many Kyrgyz travel as migrant workers. Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Bishkek for talks, and his face was displayed on billboards around the city.

Nurbek Toktakunov, a human rights activist and critic of Japarov, said the president's dominance of the political arena represented a failure of what he called attempts to artificially transplant Western-style democracy into Kyrgyzstan.

"Right now, the ruling elite relies on public opinion. And public opinion is that the people want, and have always wanted, an individual ruler who, without the people’s involvement, would establish justice," he said. "And they got what they wanted."

(Reporting by Aigerim Turgunbaeva and Felix Light in Bishkek, Editing by Timothy Heritage)