1. Home
  2. Asia
  3. Kyrgyzstan

Focus on the presidential election

Since its independence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union, Kyrgyzstan has been struggling to find its way. Lacking the resources to survive on its own, this tiny, landlocked Central Asian country of 4.5 million has relied heavily on a liberal agenda and the goodwill of Western donors to get by. But this week, following Sunday’s presidential election in which the incumbent Askar Akayev was returned to power with an overwhelming victory, experts questioned by IRIN raised serious doubts. Akayev, in power since independence, received 75 percent of Sunday’s vote. His main rival, Omurbek Tekebayev, a socialist, received only 14 percent. The next day, Tekebayev’s supporters cried foul. And news reports quoted his campaign director, Emil Aliyev, as saying: “We have the grounds to appeal the results of the elections. As soon as we get all the information and our report is ready, we’ll make it public.” The Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a 54-nation body overseeing human rights and security issues, said the “remarkable level of transparency” in Sunday’s poll had been marred by irregularities. In a statement on Monday, the OSCE said: “The 2000 Kyrgyz presidential election failed to comply with OSCE commitments for democratic elections.” But it added, “democratic developments in the Kyrgyz Republic remain comparatively viable though increasingly challenged.” In an interview with IRIN on Tuesday, Mark Stevens, head of the OSCE mission in the capital, Bishkek, said, negative trends in the electoral process had been pointed out to the government. “This election was not in compliance with international standards,” he said. “This was a very restrictive campaign for the opposition. Candidates were not given equal access to the media and there were numerous cases of petty harassment.” Akayev had been seen by many as the most democratic leader of the five post-Soviet Central Asian states. But in its statement, the OSCE also said: “The media environment was characterised by an overwhelming tendency of state-owned and government-oriented private media to exhibit an overt bias in favour of the incumbent president.” Dusan Relic, an observer for the European Institute of Mass Media criticised the Kygyz media coverage saying Akayev had received 90 percent of airtime during radio and television broadcasts, whereas the other candidates had received only one to four percent each. According to the OSCE, although six competing candidates offered the electorate some political choice in Sunday’s election, the restrictive process of candidate registration limited the field. News reports said that several leaders were barred from the presidential race for failing a rigorous Kyrgyz language test or on technicalities. In addition, OSCE said executive authorities, mostly at local and regional levels, interfered in the functioning of election commissions and the electoral process in general. Some local authorities reportedly issued orders barring observers from areas where voters were being tallied. The OSCE also referred to two incidents of stuffing ballot boxes - one in which 700 ballots were found in a ballot box in the capital Bishkek before voting had started and a second in the city of Osh, near the border with Uzbekistan. The OSCE also cited pressure against a major domestic election monitoring NGO called the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society. Its executive director, Tolikan Isimilova, told IRIN on Tuesday that originally they had planned to have some 2,000 independent observers at polling stations throughout the country, but the government election commission made this virtually impossible. “Local authorities issued a letter to polling stations restricting their access,” she said. “This is a terrible situation. Akayev must know this is a hollow victory. This is not a victory of the people, but of the totalitarian system that governs us.”

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

Share this article

Get the day’s top headlines in your inbox every morning

Starting at just $5 a month, you can become a member of The New Humanitarian and receive our premium newsletter, DAWNS Digest.

DAWNS Digest has been the trusted essential morning read for global aid and foreign policy professionals for more than 10 years.

Government, media, global governance organisations, NGOs, academics, and more subscribe to DAWNS to receive the day’s top global headlines of news and analysis in their inboxes every weekday morning.

It’s the perfect way to start your day.

Become a member of The New Humanitarian today and you’ll automatically be subscribed to DAWNS Digest – free of charge.

Become a member of The New Humanitarian

Support our journalism and become more involved in our community. Help us deliver informative, accessible, independent journalism that you can trust and provides accountability to the millions of people affected by crises worldwide.

Join