Back to the Old System for Kyrgyzstan’s Future Parliamentary Elections

On June 9, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov signed the law on amendments to the procedures on electing members of parliament. There are some positive and some controversial changes, one of the most significant of which is the diminished role for political parties. Structurally, the new legislation creates 30 electoral districts in Kyrgyzstan. Each district will elect three parliamentary deputies, with the three candidates receiving the most votes becoming the deputies from their district. Currently, there are 90 seats in Kyrgyzstan’s parliament. That number will remain. According to the new law, one of the three candidates from each territorial constituency must be a woman. Kyrgyzstan has had a gender quota rule in place since 2007 whereby at least 30% of the members of parliament should be women. However, in reality that percentage has never been reached. Currently, only 20 of the 90 of the deputies in Kyrgyzstan’s parliament are women. Under the new legislation, a minimum 33% quota for women is guaranteed. Another change dispenses with by-elections in the event an elected deputy steps down from their post. If a seat is vacated, the candidate from that district who received the fourth most votes in elections will receive the empty seat. If the deputy vacating their seat is a woman, the female candidate who received the next highest number of votes in that electoral district will fill the seat. MP Ulan Primov, one of the authors of the amendments, said Kyrgyzstan has spent nearly 200 million som (about $2.29 million) on by-elections since the 2021 parliamentary elections. One of the most controversial changes is the decision to revert entirely to a single-mandate selection of candidates. Kyrgyzstan elected all its deputies via the single-mandate system in the 1995, 2000, and 2005 parliamentary elections. Parties also ran candidates, but in the 1995 elections, 67 of the 105 seats went to independents, in 2000, 73 of the 105 seats were won by independents, and in 2005, after changes to parliament’s structure, 47 of the 75 places in parliament went to independents. In 2007, the system changed, and deputies were elected by party lists. This led to the first-ever ruling party in Kyrgyzstan’s history, the Ak Jol party of then-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev which took 71 of the 90 seats in parliament in the 2007 elections. Parliament’s structure was changed to 120 seats in 2010. The parliamentary elections that year, and in 2015 and 2020 were conducted using party lists. In the last parliamentary elections in November 2021, Kyrgyzstan had introduced a split system whereby 36 deputies were elected in single-mandate districts and the remaining 54 deputies by party lists. In an interview with state media outlet Kabar in February 2025, President Japarov spoke about the coming changes to election legislation, saying, “Perhaps in 40-50 years, if our people and politicians are ready, we will move to a party system of government.” It is a curious comment considering the other Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, all use party lists to elect deputies in...