Kyrgyzstan is losing its status as Central Asia’s only democracy

KYRGYZSTAN USED to be an exception in Central Asia: the sole democracy in a region run by strongmen, albeit a flawed one. That is rapidly ceasing to be the case. It regressed a bit closer to the mean on November 30th, when a parliamentary election produced victory for candidates loyal to Sadyr Japarov, the increasingly authoritarian president. That will help him consolidate power as he eyes a second term.

Mr Japarov became president in dramatic fashion five years ago. After widespread vote-buying marred an election in 2020, citizens took to the streets and soon toppled the president. Amid the chaos Mr Japarov’s allies sprung him from prison, where he was serving a sentence for kidnapping, and installed him as prime minister. He became president (in a cleanish election) a few months later. But he soon set off down an authoritarian path. He has banned outspoken media outlets and jailed political opponents. Leading figures from the opposition Social Democrats party were arrested just days before the weekend poll for allegedly plotting to foment street protests to overthrow Mr Japarov.

The election is the latest move in his power grab. Earlier this year parliament passed legislation to revert to a first-past-the-post system for its 90 seats, ostensibly to clean up politics by preventing candidates from bribing their way onto party lists. Many Kyrgyz welcomed the change in the hope that the new system might persuade lawmakers to pay at least a bit of attention to their interests. But a lacklustre campaign and restrictions on what candidates could say on the stump left voters unenthused. Turnout reached the majestic heights of 36.9%.

The effect will be to diminish the role of parties, since they are no longer assured of seats. Only one fielded candidates. Other contenders were nominally independent, including Mr Japarov’s allies. That will make it harder for rivals to form a base from which to challenge Mr Japarov at the next presidential election in 2027. Kyrgyzstan had, after previous experiences with strongman rule, restricted the presidency to a single term. Mr Japarov did away with the limit and transformed Kyrgyzstan from a parliamentary democracy into one where the president calls the shots.

He is reshaping the country in other ways, too. Two years ago he redesigned the national flag to make the sun at its centre look less like what he said was a sunflower. In September he renamed a regional capital Manas, after a Kyrgyz epic poem and its eponymous hero, to “strengthen national ideology”. More damagingly, he has introduced legislation modelled on Russia’s “foreign agents” law, which requires NGOs that receive funding from overseas to register as “foreign representatives”.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is no doubt watching Kyrgyzstan’s slide into authoritarianism with glee. Under Mr Japarov, Kyrgyzstan is a “reliable partner”, Mr Putin said during a recent visit. That reliability includes helping Russia evade sanctions, for which several Kyrgyz banks and crypto exchanges are under Western sanctions themselves. It has proved well worth the price. Sanctions-busting has helped the Kyrgyz economy grow by 9% or so every year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more than twice the rate in the half-decade before the pandemic. That boom is one reason Mr Japarov remains so popular.

The other is that after three revolutions in two decades, including the one that brought Mr Japarov to power, some voters are willing to tolerate shrinking political freedoms as the price of stability. “Democracy shouldn’t be about noise, it should be about delivery,” says Edil Baisalov, a deputy prime minister. Mr Japarov is more blunt. “The state is now strong,” he told the country ahead of the vote. “From now on you will only see coups in your dreams.” That is both a promise and a threat. ■