Tag Archives: election

European monitors applaud parliamentary election in Kyrgyzstan

OCT. 5 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — Observers from Europe’s main election watchdog the OSCE said that parliamentary elections on Oct. 4 were “unique” in post-Soviet Central Asia.

At a press conference the day after the election, Ignacio Sánchez Amor, head of the short-term OSCE observer mission said: “These lively and competitive elections were unique in this region as, until 8 o’clock last night, nobody knew what the composition of the parliament would be.”

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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)

Council of Europe says to send monitors to Azerbaijani election

SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said it would send an election monitoring team to Azerbaijan despite concerns over its human rights record.

There had been a growing expectation that PACE might follow its bigger European vote monitoring team at the OSCE’s ODHIR and cancel its planned mission to cover parliamentary elections on Nov. 1 in Azerbaijan.

But PACE has a softer reputation than ODIHR and has, in the past, been accused of turning a blind eye to Azerbaijan’s crackdowns on civil society. This year, though, it has vocally challenged the Azerbaijani president to improve human rights.

And Anne Brasseur, head of the Strasbourg-based assembly, confirmed that PACE would send a mission as part of its commitment to monitor democracy in the former Soviet Union.

“We decided to maintain the mission to Azerbaijan knowing that the human rights situation is not really good,” media quote Ms Brasseur as saying.

“We are going to observe several elections — elections in Ukraine, in Turkey, in Belarus, in Kyrgyzstan, and we are also going up observe the elections in Azerbaijan.”

Earlier this month ODIHR pulled out of covering Azerbaijan’s election after, it said, the government had halved its quota of observers. Its withdrawal pushed Europe-Azerbaijan relations — strained over the imprisonment of Azerbaijani activists and journalists — to a new low.

And without the ODHIR’s presence, Ms Brasseur said, Europe would not be able to make a full analysis on veracity of the Nov. 1 election. ODHIR had wanted to send 30 long- term monitors and 350 short-monitors to cover the election. By contrast, PACE’s deployment is far smaller.

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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Frustrations build ahead of Kyrgyzstan’s election

OCT. 2 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — By the standards of Kyrgyzstan’s febrile politics, the build up to its Oct. 4 parliamentary election has been calm but an often disinterested public and frustration over biometric data requirements have tarnished the vote.

Five years ago, in the aftermath of a revolution that ousted the unpopular Kurmanbek Bakiyev and the switch to a parliamentary democracy, it was a very different story. The mood was positive.

Now, ordinary Kyrgyz say that the political elite have gripped the political process making it less transparent and more self-serving.

“I am disappointed in representativeness of political parties, there are no parties for which I can vote,” said 23-year old Atabek, a student.

His friend, Temirlan, agreed.

“I wont go as there is no party in which I could be confident,” he said. As well as the usual complaints over the quality of the candidates, controversy has focused on requirements set out by the Kyrgyz Central Election Committee which insisted that people had to submit various personal data to the authorities before they could vote. Roughly a third of the population failed to register for the vote.

Still, some voters are upbeat.

Jenish, a 45-year-old taxi driver waiting for clients in a main Bishkek street said: “I will go to elections to fulfil my civic duty.”

Another Bishkek resident, 32-year old Mira, was excited about voting.

“I will vote for a party where a leader is a young and successful businessman,” she said.

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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

OSCE/ODHIR pressures Azerbaijan

SEPT. 19 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan has come under increased international pressure to allow more monitors from the OSCE’s ODHIR into the country to monitor a parliamentary election in November. The OSCE cancelled its monitoring mission because it said the authorities in Azerbaijan had permitted only half the requested monitors.

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Azerbaijan’s first lady wants to be MP

SEPT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Mehriban Aliyeva, wife of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, has registered as a candidate in parliamentary elections on Nov. 1, media reported. Ms Aliyeva has not previously shown any political inclination.

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Biometric data enables Kyrgyz people to vote

SEPT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Most Kyrgyz migrant workers will not be able vote in the parliamentary election because they have failed to submit biometric data to the authorities before the deadline. The Zamandash opposition party told RFE/RL that only around 10,000 out of 700,000 Kyrgyz living in Russia will vote in the Oct. 4 election.

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Comment: This election is a poor advert for democracy in Kyrgyzstan

SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Fourteen parties will appear on the ballot for voters in Kyrgyzstan to elect from on Oct. 4, yet from social media to taxi chatter, the complaint is of a lack of genuine choice. The menu contains the familiar set of several dozen politicians, from several parties that sound all too similar.

What the complainers ask for may be too much, one might say. The uninspiring choice may actually be the only thing that contemporary democracy can offer. Politicians seek reelection, parties try to cater to as wide a spectrum of voters as possible, and none of them accept the risks involved in running on sharply defined and innovative policy platforms.

But wait. Even by the modest standards of latter-day democracy, Kyrgyzstan may be scoring too low.

That 75% of sitting deputies are seeking reelection may be normal, but it cannot be normal when an enormous number of them are on tickets of new parties, often very different from their original parties.

There is a tendency in Kyrgyz politics for the protagonists to swap parties regularly and for new parties to emerge, confusing the electorate and cementing the feeling that the election is more about personalities than policies and issues.

None of the parties has seriously criticised President Almazbek Atambayev. No party is anything close to pro-Western or critical of Kyrgyzstan’s over-reliance on Russia. All are happy about the Eurasian Economic Union.

All are anti-corruption, pro- government-efficiency, pro- national-unity and a list of other goods, with no detail on how to attain them.

In an election which, thus, seems to be all about personalities, all the main parties are parading decidedly mixed lists of candidates. Popular politicians next to infamous ex- officials; progressives next to conservatives; wealthy business owners next to underpaid teachers; law enforcement leaders next to those with criminal past; young candidates next to old.

Thus, the voters are facing a long ballot with little variety and more than a bit of confusion.

Lacking genuine choice, they are left to vote either for the President’s Social Democratic party, to keep things the same, or for a party linked to their clan or family.

These growing pains – if this is what they can be called – are not good signals for a more democratic Kyrgyzstan.

By Emil Dzhuraev, Lecturer in politics at the American University of Central Asia, Bishkek

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Comment: To monitor or not, that is the question

SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) -Has Europe’s democracy watchdog, the OSCE, shot itself in the foot by deciding not to monitor Azerbaijan’s up and coming parliamentary election?

Certainly it must have been irritating that the Azerbaijani authorities had told the OSCE that it can have barely half the number of monitors it had asked for on the ground. But that feels like scant justification for pulling out altogether.

Instead, this feels personal.

The Azerbaijani authorities have been in menacing mood, pressuring anybody in their way and this has included the OSCE. Earlier this year, the OSCE closed its office in Baku under pressure from the Azerbaijani authorities.

Now it feels that the OSCE has been able to exact some sort of payback by crying foul over monitor numbers, pulling its observation team from Azerbaijan’s Nov. 1 election altogether and drawing yet more international condemnation on Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev.

But this is, surely, an opportunity missed.

Would it not have made more sense to monitor the election as best as possible with limited resources. That way the West can improve its understand of what is going on in Azerbaijan and maintain closer contact with ordinary Azerbaijanis.

There will be other Western vote monitoring teams at the election but without the size and experience of the OSCE team, the West is severely limited and this is a crying shame.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

OSCE cancels plan to monitor Azerbaijani vote

SEPT. 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Europe’s main election monitoring watchdog, the OSCE’s ODHIR, said it won’t send observers to Azerbaijan’s parliamentary election on Nov. 1 because the Azerbaijani authorities had imposed too many restrictions to make it worthwhile.

The decision by the OSCE not to monitor Azerbaijan’s elections for the first time since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 is a major snub to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and pushes relations between Europe and Azerbaijan to a new low.

At a press conference later in the week with Czech President Milos Zeman who was visiting Baku, Mr Aliyev said: “As you probably know already, cooperation between the European Parliament and the Azerbaijani Parliament has been suspended. This is the result of the dirty campaign being waged against us.”

On Sept. 11, Azerbaijan cancelled an EU delegation visit to Baku and also started the process of pulling out of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, a group that pulls together the European Union and parliaments from the former Soviet Union.

The European Union and Azerbaijan have rowed over Mr Aliyev’s commitment to human rights and free speech. Azerbaijani officials have over the past couple of years detained and imprisoned several prominent human rights campaigners and journalists. Western governments have criticised Azerbaijan for the crackdown while Azerbaijan has said it is the victim of a smear campaign.

But the OSCE’s decision not to monitor Azerbaijan’s election is a watershed decision that pushes the one-time strong Western ally closer towards Russia.

The OSCE, which has never judged an election in Azerbaijan to be either free or fair, said that the conditions that the Azerbaijani authorities had set were just too restrictive to operate effectively.

It had wanted to place 30 long- term and 350 short-term monitors in Azerbaijan for the election but had instead only been allowed six long- term monitors and 125 short-term monitors.

“The restriction on the number of observers taking part would make it impossible for the mission to carry out effective and credible election observation,” the OSCE said in a press release.

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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

28% of Kyrgyz electorate fail to register for vote

SEPT. 8 2015, BISHKEK (The Conway Bulletin) — More than a quarter of Kyrgyz citizens eligible to vote in next month’s parliamentary election have not submitted their biometric data to the authorities ahead of a Sept. 19 deadline, the State Registration Service said.

Under new election rules, if people fail to submit their personal biometric data before the deadline their right to vote will be withdrawn, drawing criticism from human rights defenders who have said this is a breach of civil liberties. They also said government agencies were not competent enough to protect the data.

The State Registration Service said it still hadn’t receive data from 1,072,080 people of the 3,777,500 electorate. The data people need to submit includes an electronic signature, photos and fingerprints.

In central Bishkek, a 22-year-old man explained why he had not to submit his data.

“Our people love freedom. I don’t want to be controlled by the state,” he said, without giving his name,

The risk for the government is that if a quarter of the electorate chooses not to register for the Oct. 4 vote, it will fail to deliver a genuine mandate.

Rita Karasartova, head of Institute of Public Analysis, a Kyrgyz NGO, told local media she thought many people were unaware that the deadline to submit biometric data was two weeks ahead of the election itself.

“Citizens will start submitting biometrics at the eve of the elections because they will not be aware of this deadline,” she said, warning this may trigger complaints about voters’

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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)