Race launched for a very rugged cross-country sprint

Starting today Kyrgyzstan's electorate will see the menu for them to choose from. As I heard, from the initial 50-odd parties that expressed interest in running for parliament last night there were 12 that went through all the barriers to arrive at the start-line for the morning of November 26. Some might try one way or another to get the ticket even if late, but permission to be included in the race is veeery far from license to be included in the parliament. Of the 12 that did get full regisration, it would be surprising enough if even 6 get the right to occupy any seats. That is of course due to the ridiculous 0.5% clause that haphazardly got introduced into the Election Law and even more ridiculously interpreted for application by the Central Election Commission.

This 0.5% rule, which requires that a party must win at least 0.5% of the total national number of voters from each of the seven oblasts and two cities, will be just numerically impossible to satisfy for more than half-a-dozen. The point in case is Talas oblast, with about 120,000 voters total. Half-percent of the national voter list is about 14,000-15,000. If Talassians' turnout is, say, at about 70%, then we have about 80,000 to split between the parties. Even if this number is divided as evenly as possible, it would still be too little to be enough for even 6 parties (it'd have to be at least about 85,000). Since most probably one or two parties will win much more than the minimal requirement, Talas promises to be an insurmountable hurdle for many parties that might win significant vote otherwise. Naryn and Batken are similarly very restrictive cases.

But even more egasperating is how completely random this rule is. First of all, the weight of a Talassian's vote will be about 7-8 times greater than that of an Osh-ian (oblast); this most elementary and fundamental democratic rule of "one person, one vote" is violated. Secondly, just look how random the regions themselves are. Were we to hold the same election 8 years ago, when Batken oblast did not yet exist, the Talassian's vote would then be about 9 times heavier than the Oshian's. All these oblasts were drawn quite randomly. Third, consider that unlike in the previous Election Law, when we would be concerned with the percentages of actual turnout vote (given that it's higher than 50%), now we are concerned with the total number of voters in the country, regardless of the turnout. And this is done with the knowledge that at least some 15-20% (probably higher) of Kyrgyzstan's voters are outside of the country, especially disproportionately many from Talas(!) and Batken(!). Fourthly, most ridiculously, this amendment to the draft of the Law was made after the referendum was already announced on the basis of the pre-amendment draft. A group of 'initiative' persons pleaded the President to make this amendment, and he did. No serious study, clarification, discussion, nothing like that. And ultimately, this most controversial last-minute change is left to the CEC members to interpret - a para-legal group at best, and apparently very poorly versed in law. It will be only reasonable to expect this rule to ignite some serious sparks at the vote-count stage.

With this shamefully illogical, illegitimate and illegal clause under arm, today we start the race campaign. I wonder whether there is really good reason to so strictly delimit campaigning period (they give some rationale, but nothing sounds convincing enough). Well, one thing is for sure - Kyrgyzstanis don't get to enjoy campaign fights for nearly as long as American voters for the next president. In just about three weeks, Kyrgyzstanis will be relieved of this nuisance. They will vote barely knowing what they are voting for. And this is an important point to dwell on.

What will the Kyrgyzstani voter vote for? For the first time, the entire parliament will be made up of political parties, who are going to campaign as political parties... Or will they? Kyrgyzstan is used to vote for persons, not ideas, and very likely the parties will stake their campaigns in that order: advertise the persons they have in their numbers, rather than their ideas. It was funny but also very representative in Jalalabad: a group of voters demanded that Mr. Tashiev, ex-parliamentarian, be included in a party's list, threatening that otherwise not a single person will vote for that party in their village. It is easier to campaign in this way for two reasons: one - the average voter will anyway look at the names in the party ballot when making the choice, two - most of the parties do not really have clear ideas beyond phony slogans.

While the first reason is perfectly valid and rational for parties to keep in mind, the second reason - absence of any clear ideological platforms, programs, values, and so on - is a problem waiting to loom large. Of the parties that are running (those that I know), most are content-vacuous. The relatively better ones are probably the Social Democratic Party - if they manage to pin down for themselves, and then for their voters, the basic credos of social democracy; the Ata Meken socialist party - if they, too, manage to communicate their socialist program and, especially, manage to get beyond bitter negativity (against the current regime); and probably the Communists - their ideological base, if they want it, is there in great volumes from our recent history, but it is hard to believe that Iskhak Masaliev is really a Communist, for one. But most parties, and especially Ak Jol - the prohibitively young presidential party poised to capture the power, are nearly content-free. All they have are shallow slogans such as "Unity", "Prosperity" or "Unity and Prosperity". (If emptiness is the truth, then it might as well be worth openly declaring it, like the party "Aalam - Party of the Partiless" has done: the emptiness then becomes a political statement, and hence, morally on a higher ground than pretense, perhaps). This may not be a problem today for parties to get votes, but it does pose a much greater concern in a slightly longer term perspective for Kyrgyzstan's politics.

With these in mind, I look forward to an interesting and instuctive couple of weeks. Alga!