Uzbekistan Holds Elections – Without Opposition

A parliamentary election that does not feature a single opposition candidate is casting fresh doubt on President Islam Karimov's commitment to democratization in Uzbekistan. Election officials have excluded all opposition parties from the December 26 poll, prompting opposition members to call on voters and international observers to boycott the election.

In the run-up to elections, officials refused outright to register opposition candidates or invoked strict registration deadlines that prevented opposition movements from legalizing their status as political parties in time to appear on the ballot. Uzbek electoral law stipulates that a party must be registered as an official political party nine months before a poll in order to field candidates. As a result, Erk (Freedom), Birlik (Unity) and Ozod Dehkontar (Free Farmers), the country's main opposition groups, have all been denied representation.

Though more than 500 candidates from five pro-government political parties – Adolat (Justice), Fidokorlar (Selfless), Liberal-Democratic Party, Milly Tiklanish (National Revival), and the People's Democratic Party – will take part in the election, differences between official party platforms are slight. Candidates for the 120 seats available, many of them businessmen with close ties to the government, have directed only modest criticism at Karimov administration policies.

With no opposition member on the roster of candidates, Erk and Birlik have urged both Uzbek voters and international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States Executive Committee to stay away from polling stations on election day. On November 26, Ozod Dehkonlar members picketed the OSCE's offices in Tashkent, arguing that the organization's election observers would not be able to prevent voting fraud. A protest was also held on December 1 outside the US embassy in Tashkent with a petition to President George W. Bush to "raise his voice in defense of democracy in Uzbekistan," the UN news service IRIN reported.

So far, reactions to the opposition's demands have been cautious. The OSCE will be sending only a "limited mission" of 20 observers – a fraction of the number sent to observe neighboring Kazakhstan's September parliamentary elections. The observer mission's web site states that monitors will not perform any "systematic observation" of the poll, but "assess the entire election process." The New York-based Human Rights Watch has taken up the opposition's call for the OSCE to not observe the election, arguing in an October 18 letter to the organization that sending representatives to monitor the vote would "send the mistaken message that its electoral system and the government's respect for civic freedoms meet OSCE standards."

Meanwhile, the US, which maintains a military base in Uzbekistan for its operations in Afghanistan, has issued a statement casting doubt on the likelihood of a free and fair election. In a December 16 speech to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, US representative Paul Jones stated that the absence of opposition candidates "[called] into question whether the elections will truly be competitive."

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which is sending a delegation of 70 election monitors, has adopted a more distant approach. "We have no preferences with regard to the outcome. Neither do we meddle in the affairs of the parties running for seats on the parliament," CIS Executive Committee Chairman Vladimir Rushailo told a news conference in Samarkand on November 30.

But in a December 2 speech to parliament, President Islam Karimov maintained that outsiders' criticism of the election was only welcomed. "It should be nobody's secret that our country – with the aim of holding the elections in compliance with all democratic and international standards – considers the experience accumulated in advanced countries acceptable to us," Uzbek Radio reported Karimov as saying. "It serves our purpose to accept all their views and recommendations that are critical and, at the same time, objective."

The elections will result in the formation of the lower house of a new, bicameral Oliy Majlis, or parliament, first proposed four years ago. Elections for regional council deputies will also take place. In January, another national ballot will be held, this time for the parliament's upper house, a 100-seat Senate.

Some independent Uzbek journalists, based outside the country, have argued that the election date was deliberately chosen to coincide with the Christmas holidays in hopes of minimizing participation by Western observers. Others have forecast the possibility of post-election protests against falsified results, but the Uzbek public has shown little sign of mass mobilization. With media controlled by the government, forums for debate have been few. Public political meetings have been banned, and registration clampdowns have severely hampered the work of non-governmental organizations. In rural areas, increased police surveillance in response to terrorist attacks in March and July 2004 has further discouraged dissent.

In this climate, the opposition's protests are expected to have limited effect. With individual leaders rather than policy ideas driving opposition groups, no strong coalition of critics of the Karimov administration exists. Discords exist both within parties – the Erk party split earlier this year into two hostile camps – and between them. While Erk and Ozod Dehkhantor are boycotting the election, for instance, Birlik is fielding election monitors and some candidates from so-called citizen groups.

But with only a 33 percent turnout required to validate the vote, government leaders are expressing little sign of uneasiness that the opposition's boycott could lead to a Kiev-like scenario in Tashkent. Addressing the issue head-on in his speech to parliament earlier this month, Karimov was succinct. The Ukrainian uprising, he said, could be attributed in part to "popular discontent" and in part to President Leonid Kuchma's "tactical and strategic mistakes" in ensuring a fair and democratic vote.