After being stripped of their right to over a hundred costly new armchairs by an indignant public last month, Kyrgyzstan’s members of parliament have given up their government-issue cars in a shock display of selflessness.
In recent weeks parliamentarians have been outdoing each other in demonstrating willingness to dispense with the perks of the job. Those included a vehicle fueled at the the expense of the state with a personal driver, as well as a small staff of administrative assistants and political consultants. Housing is also provided for deputies without a resident in the capital, Bishkek.
But up until November 25, when a clear majority voted against keeping the parliamentary fleet, it was far from clear they were going to take the plunge.
After a November 24 meeting of a commission on cutting parliamentary expenditures, Altynai Omurbekova, of the opposition Respublika party vented, to Russia’s Sputnik news agency.
“It was decided that the MPs would not refuse [the services of] either their consultants, or their helpers. As previously they will have drivers and cars, while those [MPs] from outside the city will receive housing. In total, nothing was cut or optimized,” she said.
Omurbekova did prove correct about parliamentarians retaining their staff of five assistants per lawmaker, most of whom earn notably more than the parliamentary drivers now out of work, while housing is still there for deputies that need it.
The debate over parliamentary expenses touches a populist nerve in a country where around a third of the population lives below the national poverty line. The issue was one of the core messages in the election campaign of Respublika, a party headed by wealthy business magnate Omurbek Babanov.
Nevertheless, it is a fairly superficial approach to economic waste in the country. Corruption runs through the government from top to bottom, while the country’s civil service is a bloated tribute to overlap and inefficiency. Real systemic reform is firmly on the back-burner, whatever vehicles lawmakers use to get to work.
In the meantime, not all legislators are prepared to bow to public ire at state-funded indulgences.
Earlier this month, candidates for the parliament’s two vice-speaker positions declared that they had no need for the government-provided Cadillacs that come with the office.
Iskhak Masaliyev, a member with the Onuguu-Progress party, as well as the de facto leader of the Party of Communists of Kyrgyzstan, spotted an opportunity.
“Give me this Cadillac. I won’t refuse it. And when you will need it for work reasons, I’ll be ready to lend it to you,” he said.
Two days later, at a meeting in front of Lenin's monument to mark the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Masaliyev complained that “money spoils everyone and everything” but reassured a mostly aging crowd of Communists that "our idea will triumph.”
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