This weekend, Kyrgyzstan’s voters filed into polling stations to vote simultaneously for local legislatures and in a referendum on proposed changes to the constitution. Despite an incredibly low threshold set by authorities – only 30% of eligible voters were required for the results to be valid – preliminary data points to a potentially serious crisis in legitimacy for Kyrgyzstan’s new president Sadyr Japarov.
As of Tuesday 13 April, the Central Election Committee was reporting abysmally low turnout figures - later confirmed at 37% of potential voters. For local legislatures, 30.89% of the electorate participated, in particular for city legislatures, including for the coveted capital, Bishkek, the seats of which were chosen by only 25.89% of those eligible to vote. On the constitutional changes, approximately 40% voted, of which roughly 80% were in favour of the proposed changes. For context, that would mean approximately 1.1 million people out of a nation of six million have opted to make Sadyr Japarov the most powerful president since Kurmanbek Bakiyev, Kyrgyzstan’s second and most infamous leader, who was ousted in an uprising almost 11 years ago to the day.
Parliamentary elections held last October erupted in yet another national uprising – Kyrgyzstan’s fifth since independence in 1991, including a failed revolt in August 2019 led by former president Almazbek Atambayev. In October, rioters succeeded in toppling the government of Sooronbai Jeenbekov, propelling Japarov from a prison cell – where he was serving a long sentence for kidnapping – to the presidency in the space of a few days. These events seemingly caught everyone by surprise, even Russia, Kyrgyzstan’s chief patron and, in the opinion of many people, puppeteer.
