Kyrgyzstan: Conflict Over Constitution Continues

Kyrgyzstan was again plunged into crisis on December 19 when President Kurmanbek Bakiyev accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Feliks Kulov and his entire cabinet. As debate rages over how to select their replacements under a new constitution, the compromise document itself is causing renewed disarray among the country's political elite.

On December 22, parliament began discussing constitutional amendments proposed by President Bakiyev in response to a written request by 55 deputies from both pro-presidential and opposition camps in parliament. The members of parliament said the new constitution, hastily passed after a week of opposition street protests on November 9, contained numerous inconsistencies that required correction.

But the opposition said that Bakiyev's latest constitutional amendments would reinstate many of the very powers he had agreed to give up in order to put an end to November's demonstrations. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Opposition members of parliament said the cabinet's resignation was a manufactured crisis designed to prompt renewed constitutional debate and put pressure on parliament to disband.

"The reforms had already started to function, but they decided to keep parliament in its current form until 2010," Central Asia expert Arkady Dubnov told the news website Ferghana.ru on December 19. "In this way, when they passed the constitution in two minutes in November, a mine was planted that one way or another was going to explode. So now it has exploded."

The constitution requires the party winning the greatest number of seats in Kyrgyzstan's parliament, the Zhogorku Kenesh, to propose a candidate for prime minister. But the current body has no members elected according to party lists; all won seats individually on a regional basis. The cabinet's resignation has brought this contradiction to the surface.

Kulov and his colleagues, who will continue to act in their previous capacities until a new government is formed, explained their move in a letter to Bakiyev released on December 19. In it, they stated that they hoped to begin bringing Kyrgyzstan's political order in line with the new constitution, to pave the way for elections for a new parliament, and to promote political stabilization and economic reform.

"I had hoped that the current parliament would be able to overcome the legal flaws in the new constitution," Kulov said in an interview with the state-run news agency Kabar on December 20. "But to sit and wait until someone goes to court and says that decisions are being taken illegally because there is not a quorum [of the required party-affiliated deputies], that would simply undermine the entire work of the government and parliament."

The cabinet's resignation follows months of political gridlock and clashes with the Zhogorku Kenesh. Some observers suggest that the logical response by parliament would be to avoid further crisis by disbanding voluntarily.

"To get out of this constitutional dead-end, it is essential that parliament now announce its dissolution," and set new elections, said political scientist Nur Omarov. "Most likely, parliament will try to preserve its authority," he added, "but I think that the president's administration has its own levers of influence on the deputies and parliament by which it can obtain the needed decision."

Opposition members of parliament claimed that a new, perhaps more pliant parliament is exactly what the executive branch wants, and vowed to resist any moves toward dissolution.

"Apart from the will of parliament, the Zhogorku Kenesh can be disbanded only by anti-constitutional means," said former parliamentary speaker and opposition leader Omurbek Tekebayev on December 20, according to news agency AKIpress.

But, Tekebayev continued, "there will not be any kind of political vacuum" caused by the government's resignation, because a new government could be formed at the president's initiative, as it was under the old system. (All laws continue to remain in force until they are brought into agreement with the new document; arguably, therefore, the law on cabinet selection still gives the president the right to initiate the process.)

Parliamentary Speaker Marat Sultanov said on December 22 that he would send a letter to Bakiyev requesting that he initiate the government formation process by proposing a candidate for prime minister, local news agencies reported.

Nurlan Sadykov, chairman of Bishkek's Institute for Constitutional Policy, said there are ways out of the crisis other than electing an entirely new parliament or having the president propose a new government. He suggested holding supplementary elections to add 15 new seats to parliament by party lists and give the winning party the right to nominate a prime minister. This, along with a new law endorsing a temporary government until the elections, would bring both the number of deputies and the government selection process into line with the new constitution, he said.

Sadykov agreed with Central Asia expert Dubnov that a "mine" had been laid down in the text of the new constitution, and that the discrepancies needed to be corrected. But, he said, "that mine was exploded artificially. No one can say it was hidden and then someone unintentionally stepped on it."

"To exploit these [constitutional] powers like deadly weapons will lead again to an escalation of tensions," Sadykov said.

Editor's Note: Daniel Sershen is a freelance journalist based in Bishkek.