Ashraf Abo Arafe
As we know that parliamentary elections were held in Uzbekistan on 22 December 2019, with a second round in 25 of the 150 constituencies on 5 January 2020.They were the first elections to be held after the death of Islam Karimov in 2016. The ruling Uzbekistan Liberal Democratic Party remained the largest party in the Legislative Chamber, winning 53 of the 150 seats. All five parties contesting the elections were regarded as loyal to President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
Leading with a “good neighbor” policy and economic liberalization, the administration of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has marched forward under the banner of reform since late 2016. This week, as the country approached parliamentary elections, The Economist announced Uzbekistan as its country of the year, the most improved the world over.
But while the drumbeat of progress is persistent, it is not always steady. And not all ears hear the same tune. The process of reform is complex and attempting to distill it down to a single narrative is impossible. Doing otherwise reeks of hedging, but reflects the messy truth.
A perfect example of this has come to the fore in the days ahead of the parliamentary polls. In Tashkent, you can find both tremendously excitement about the election and also extreme apathy. We see this diversity of opinion among analysts and observers also.
U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan Daniel Rosenblum told The Diplomat in an interview that going into the December 22 parliamentary elections expectations were (and for many still are) low. But the diplomatic community, at least, has been “pleasantly surprised at the degree of openness and the degree of competitiveness that we’re seeing, as relatively limited as it is.”
Sunday’s election will be Uzbekistan’s first parliamentary poll since 2014 and is an opportunity to inject possible life into the body.
In 2014, the parliament’s 150 seats were divided between four parties — the Liberal Democratic Party (O’zLiDeP, 52 seats), the Democratic Party of Uzbekistan or Milliy Tiklanish (36), the People’s Democratic Party (27), and the Social Democratic Party or Adolat (20) — and the Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan (EMU), which was allotted 15 seats automatically. The EMU has been recast as a party for the upcoming election.
Uzbekistan has never held an election deemed by Western observers to be free and fair, including the 2016 election of Mirziyoyev. Mirziyoyev served as prime minister for 13 years under Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, and had taken over as interim president following Karimov’s death in the fall of 2016.
While Rosenblum commented that “the political reform [in Uzbekistan] has lagged behind other reform areas because it is the most difficult,” others see the matter of “politics” in a different light.
Jennifer Murtazashvili of the University of Pittsburgh told The Diplomat, “We think of political reforms as those actions taken by the government in the formal political sphere. If we take a broader view of politics, we see [an Uzbek] society that is quite active in policy and politics.”
Such comments are not necessarily in contradiction; they merely reflect a focus on different levels and kinds of politics.
In enhancing civil liberties and freedom of speech, Murtazashvili said, “Citizens and civil society are emerging as an important veto player on policy issues on an ad hoc basis — it’s just that civil society is not registered as a formal NGO.” An important example is the government’s tolerance of public outcries against property demolitions over the summer, she said. “The fact that the government has allowed this on such a widescale basis continues to surprise me. The tolerance for such freedoms is a very significant political reform.”
The 2019 parliamentary election is being carried out in a more open environment and it shows. It’s also clear that despite progress, there is a long way to go for Uzbek democracy.
