Uzbekistan Prepares for the Polls: Embracing a New Electoral System

On October 27, citizens of Uzbekistan will cast their ballots under a new mixed electoral system for the 150-member Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis (Lower House of Parliament) in elections billed as “My choice is my prospering Motherland.” Half of the candidates will be elected from single-member districts using a first-past-the-post system, whilst the other half will come from nationwide proportional representation which requires parties to surpass a 7% electoral threshold. If fewer than one-third of eligible voters participate, the election will be deemed invalid, and should no party meet the threshold for proportional seats, those elections will be considered void. By mandate, at least 40% of the candidates must be women, up from 30% in the elections held in 2019. Additionally, 56 members of the upper chamber, 65 deputies of the Jokargy Kenes of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, 12 regional and 208 district and city council seats are also being contested by approximately 30,000 candidates. At the invitation of the authorities in Uzbekistan, at the end of September, the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) dispatched a team of long-term observers. On October 5, Uzbekistan held a groundbreaking pre-election TV debate for party leaders which was broadcast live on multiple TV channels and social media platforms in Uzbek, Russian, English, and Karakalpak. Reportedly modeled on the BBC’s Question Time, the debate’s audience featured voices from the nation's youth, women, and ethnic minorities as part of a drive to engage with voters described by organizers as “innovate, creative [and] interactive. Five parties - the Liberal-Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, Milli Tiklanish (National Revival) Democratic Party, the Ecological Party of Uzbekistan, the People’s Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (PDP), and the Adolat (Justice) Social-Democratic Party – have been registered for the upcoming elections. However, others have faced a backlash for attempting to register. According to The Diplomat, all of the entities running “have always been perceived as mere extensions of the state.” Since the death of long-term despot, Islam Karimov, however, Uzbekistan’s “state apparatus [have] become more open,” as noted by an election observer in 2019, whilst the platforms of figures such as Alisher Qodirov have increasingly chimed with the public. Amidst reforms aimed at tackling endemic corruption, in recent years Uzbekistan has gained ground on Transparency International’s global corruption perception index, and recently partnered with the World Bank on “training, projects, and research to combat corruption.”