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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kyrgyzstan
Index
The period immediately preceding and following independence saw a
proliferation of political groups of various sizes and platforms. Although
President Akayev emerged from the strongest of those groups, in the early
1990s no organized party system developed either around Akayev or in
opposition to him.
Communist Parties
The Communist Party of Kyrgyzstan (CPK), which was the only legal
political party during the Soviet years, was abolished in 1991 in the
aftermath of the failed coup against the Gorbachev government of the
Soviet Union. A successor, the Kyrgyzstan Communist Party, was allowed to
register in September 1992. It elected two deputies to the lower house of
parliament in 1995. In that party, significant oppositionists include past
republic leader Absamat Masaliyev, a former first secretary of the CPK.
The 1995 election also gave a deputy's mandate to T. Usubaliyev, who had
been head of the CPK and leader of the republic between 1964 and 1982.
Another party with many former communist officials is the Republican
People's Party. Two other, smaller neocommunist parties are the Social
Democrats of Kyrgyzstan, which gained three seats in the upper house and
eight seats in the lower house of the 1995 parliament, and the People's
Party of Kyrgyzstan, which holds three seats in the lower house.
Other Parties
All of the other parties in existence in 1995 began as unsanctioned
civic movements. The first is Ashar (Help), which was founded in 1989 as a
movement to take over unused land for housing; Ashar took one seat in the
upper house in the 1995 elections. A fluctuating number of parties and
groups are joined under the umbrella of the Democratic Movement of
Kyrgyzstan (DDK); the most influential is Erkin Kyrgyzstan (Freedom for
Kyrgyzstan), which in late 1992 split into two parties, one retaining the
name Erkin Kyrgyzstan, and the other called Ata-meken (Fatherland). In the
1995 elections, Erkin Kyrgyzstan took one seat and Ata-meken two seats in
the upper house. In the spring of 1995, the head of Erkin Kyrgyzstan was
indicted for embezzling funds from the university of which he is a rector;
it is unclear whether or not this accusation was politically motivated.
Another democratically inclined party, Asaba (Banner) also took one seat
in the upper house. Registration was denied to another group, the Freedom
Party, because its platform includes the creation of an Uygur autonomous
district extending into the Chinese Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region,
which the Chinese government opposes. The Union of Germans took one seat
in the lower house, and a Russian nationalist group, Concord, also took
one seat.
For all their proliferation, parties have not yet played a large part in
independent Kyrgyzstan. In the mid-1990s, early enthusiasm for the
democratic parties faded as the republic's economy grew worse and party
officials were implicated in the republic's proliferating political
corruption. The communist successor parties, on the other hand, appeared
to gain influence in this period. In the absence of elections, and with
President Akayev belonging to no party, it is difficult to predict the
future significance of any of these parties.
Data as of March 1996
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