Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (55 page)

comments were not usually accompanied by names and addresses, appeals

were often general (see Smith in this volume).

Great effort was devoted before the election to selecting candidates

who would be reliable and acceptable to their peers. Competition, if there

was any, generally occurred at this selection or nomination stage, not at the

election itself. The trick was to put forward only candidates who would be

endorsed rather than elected. Any opposition brave (or foolhardy) enough

to try and stand for election found themselves strangled by red-tape and

confronted with all manner of obstacles to registration (Medvedev 1979).

That the interests of the state should predominate over the candidate is not

surprising considering that the election validated not the individual candi-

date but the regime itself (Friedgut 1979, 96).

Gorbachev’s anti-corruption drive hit Central Asia particularly hard and

there was a rapid clearing of the old guard, often with several purges at the

top. When the musical chairs came to an abrupt halt with the USSR’s col-

lapse, the Central Asian leaders presided over sovereign states with mem-

bership of the United Nations. Independence necessitated a new legiti-

mating myth with which to justify their continued dominance and to crush

any nationalist and/or democratic movements that had managed to take

root during the period of
Glasnost
. As in Soviet times, history has been substantially rewritten but instead of Stalin magnifying his part in key

Bolshevik endeavors, Central Asian presidents have exaggerated or simply

manufactured tales of how they fought for their country’s independence.

Toadying sycophants have thus been transformed into manly freedom

fighters.

Games Without Frontiers: Election Campaigns

Elections in Central Asia legitimate power rather than provide an opportu-

nity to challenge it. Forbidding opposition parties outright would have

dented the democratic credentials of the new presidents so the generally

preferred option (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) has been to put

extraordinary barriers to the formation and operation of political parties

210

D O N N A C H A Ó B E A C H Á I N

not beholden to the government. While the count is invariably rigged, the

primary fraud occurs long before election day. The main electoral corrup-

tion is in the process not the vote. A wide variety of technical means have

been devised to destroy opposition to the executive—be it in the form of

parties, NGOs, media or universities. Tax affairs are deemed not to be in

order, organizational buildings found to be fire hazards, registration signa-

tures discovered to be invalid—the list has been potentially endless. In

Kazakhstan, one of the most novel devices has been to counter opposi-

tionists and confuse the electorate by inducing political nobodies to run

against oppositionists who bear strikingly similar names.7 Reflecting the

relative weakness of the governing elite, Kyrgyzstan’s President Askar

Akaev preferred to appoint potential rivals as ambassadors and then as

elections approached nudged the Kyrgyz courts to rule that such individu-

als could not run for political office as they were not now deemed to meet

election law residency requirements. Language laws, confining competition

to those who speak fluently the “state language”, which in many parts of

Central Asia is only spoken by a minority, is another popular way to com-

bine national populism and opposition annihilation. In Kyrgyzstan’s case,

the provision was hastily inserted into legislation to stymie the presidential

ambitions of popular Bishkek mayor, Felix Kulov, who soon after found

plenty of time in prison to overcome his linguistic deficiencies.

Election campaigns in some Central Asian states like Uzbekistan and

Turkmenistan are extremely low key. No outdoor rallies are generally per-

mitted, election material is scarce and there are few visual reminders that

an election is taking place save for a few isolated billboards exhorting the

population to vote. In Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, candidates are not

allowed to organize meetings with voters by themselves but instead are

invited to participate in discussions organized by the District Election

Commission. At such controlled gatherings, candidates speak to small

groups of voters, a format that forbids debate between candidates in favor

of establishing a dialogue with the voters. However, the candidates as a

rule say little or nothing about their policies or those of their parties but

merely provide the audience with details of their talents and professional

background. During the 2007 presidential elections, for example, the Uz-

——————

7 The author witnessed this practice while observing the 2004 parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan. This procedure bears a resemblance to that carried out in Eastern Europe during the 1940s—known as “salami tactics”—when parties of similar names were

established to dilute the vote for real opposition parties.

F A K I N G I T : N E O - S O V I E T E L E C T O R A L P O L I T I C S

211

bekistan National News Agency (UNA), which was entrusted with report-

ing the election for an international audience, provided tell-tale signs of

carefully managed electoral choreography. When Karimov spoke at meet-

ings, the report always ended by claiming that the participants said that all

progress and stability in Uzbekistan “are directly linked with the name of

Islam Karimov” and that supporting his candidature “was a reliable

guarantee of the continuation of wide-scale reforms and increasing the

people’s prosperity”. This contrasted with how the meetings of the other

candidates were reported. On no occasion did candidates solicit a vote for

themselves. Rather they were reported as saying (in exactly the same

words, irrespective of the candidate or place of meeting) that “that wide-

scale reforms implemented in Uzbekistan in the years of independence

have produced notable results. The country’s economy is developing and

the people’s well being is improving. Reforms in the economic and

sociopolitical spheres are deepening”. These “opposition” candidates of-

fered no program except praise for current progress, and the UNA report

always ended cheerily by saying that the voters present had claimed that

“conduction of the elections of the President of Uzbekistan on a multi-

party and alternative basis is proof that principles of democracy are being

observed in the country”.8

The authorities provide meager funds for each party or candidate to

conduct their campaign and the parties are often prohibited by law from

obtaining alternative campaign funds. This produces a very modest elec-

tion campaign and further skews resources in favor of the ruling regime.

All candidate posters for the 2004 Uzbekistan parliamentary elections had

a uniform layout that included the Uzbek flag and state emblem, a picture

of the candidate and the candidate’s biography.9 In Turkmenistan’s parlia-

mentary elections of the same year it was the Central Election Commis-

sion, as before, that designed, printed and distributed campaign leaflets,

posters and pamphlets. Posters during the campaign were for the only legal

contender, the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, with identically sized

——————

8 See, for example, “Islam Karimov meets voters in Jizzakh and Syrdarya regions”, UzA, December 15, 2007, 11:17, available at http://uza.uz/en/politics/115/; “Dilorom

Tashmuhamedova meets voters in Syrdarya region”, UzA, December 17, 2007, 20:40,

available at http://uza.uz/en/politics/114/; “Asliddin Rustamov meets voters in

Jizzakh region”, UzA, December 19, 2007, 09:23, available at http://uza.uz/en/-

politics/119/.

9 Nils Gunnar Songstad, “The Republic of Uzbekistan: Parliamentary Elections—2004”

(Norwegian Centre for Human Rights/NORDEM, Oslo, February 2005), 11.

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D O N N A C H A Ó B E A C H Á I N

candidate photographs and lettering. Candidates were encouraged to ad-

dress their constituents at approved “corner meetings” and the media (all

state controlled) were instructed to cover these meetings.

Presidential

Parliamentary

Referenda

Elections

Elections*

Uzbekistan 2000:

95.1 1991: 94.2

1995: 99.3

2007: 90.6

1994: 93.6

2002: 94.0

1999: 95.0

2004: 85.2

Turkmenistan

2007: 95.0

1990: 96.6

1994: 100.0

1994: 99.8

1999: 99.6

2004: 76.88

2008: 93.87

Kazakhstan 1999:

87.0 1991: 84.0

1995 (i): 91.2

2005: 76.8

1994: 73.5

1995 (ii): 90.6

1995: 79.8

1999: 62.5

2004: 56.7

2007: 64.56

Kyrgyzstan 1995:

86.2 1990: 89.0

1994: 96.0

2000: 78.4

1995: 76.3**

1994: 86.0

2005: 74.67

2000: 64.4**

1996: 96.6

2009: 79.3

2005: 60.0**

1998: 96.4

2007: 71.93

2007: 81.58

Tajikistan 1994:

95.0 1991: 84.6

1994: 90.0

1999: 98.9

1995: 84.0

1999: 91.5

2006: 90.9

2000: 93.4

2003: 93.0

2005: 92.6

Table 1: Turnout at Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in per cent10

——————

10 *Figures refer only to first round voting. Regarding the last Soviet parliamentary elections (1990-1), the exact figures are unavailable. In Uzbekistan, 500 seats were up for grabs but only 463 MPs were elected by the time of the first parliamentary session held on March 24, 1990. Of these, 368 seats had been won in the first round; 348 going to the Communists and the remainder (it seems) going to independents. The nationalist party Birlik (Unity) is alleged to have supported about 50 elected deputies. In January 1990 Supreme Soviet elections in Turkmenistan were formally multi-candidate with 90