How Kyrgyzstan’s President Imitated Putin – And How He Got It Wrong

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev claims to have won by a landslide in this week’s presidential elections. His opponents accuse him of electoral fraud, and the OSCE has complained of ballot stuffing. But no one should be surprised – Bakiyev has been playing fast and loose with electoral niceties for the past two years.

Bakiyev was brought to power in 2005 by one of the “colored” revolutions that seemed to be sweeping the former Soviet-space in the middle of this decade, and which did so much to make Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin paranoid. But unlike his fellow “revolutionary” presidents, Bakiyev is far from persona-non-grata in Moscow. He has not made anti-Russian rhetoric a signature policy, or spoken about seeking integration with the European Union or NATO (on the contrary, he made a show of kicking the Americans out of their Manas airbase earlier this year). But most importantly, Bakiyev has recreated Vladimir Putin’s model of government in Kyrgyzstan.

Bakiyev began his post-Tulip revolution tenure with the same promises of democracy and clean government propagated by Victor Yushchenko in Ukraine and Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia, and for a brief period Kyrgyzstan was seen as something of a democratic island in an increasingly authoritarian Central Asian sea. But, also like Yushchenko and Saakashvili, he soon found himself in confrontation with his former revolutionary allies.

Critics in all three countries have accused the new leaders of backsliding into bad habits of nepotism and authoritarianism. Saakashvili in particular drew condemnation from the international community after cracking down on anti-government protests in late 2007. Yushchenko is politically isolated and faces near certain defeat at the next election. But nowhere has the response to opposition been more determined than in Kyrgyzstan. By August 2008, the International Crisis Group was describing it as “a functional one-party state.” And the model Bakiyev chose to build this state on was the Russian – or more accurately Putinist – one.

The similarities with the modern Russian system of power are so striking (or, to put it another way, the plagiarism is so blatant) that it can give one a powerful feeling of déjà vu. A pliant ruling party dominates a supine parliament that seems to consider its main duty to approve any initiative the government sends its way. There are no constituency MPs, only party lists, and regional administration has been made directly subservient to the central government, which itself is dominated by a narrow clique close to the president.

And this imitation of Russian power structures was justified by borrowing from Russian exceptionalism. Kyrgyzstan, it was argued, stood “half way between East and West.” Fully-fledged Western-style democracy had not only failed, it was inherently unsuitable for Kyrgyzstan given its history and level of development. Only a strong executive unhindered by partisan bickering could deliver the necessary reforms to move Kyrgyzstan forward.

And so on. The centralization of power was even referred to as the “power vertical,” an invention of the Putin era. Since Kyrgyz government communiqués are issued in Russian, it can sometimes be difficult to tell which country one is reading about.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is the speed with which this transformation took place. What took Vladimir Putin several years of careful maneuvering and consolidation has been achieved in Kyrgyzstan in less than two. Bakiyev only founded Ak Zhol – his analogue of Putin’s United Russia – in late 2007, when he also announced his plans to consolidate executive power. A massaged referendum in October of that year changed the constitution to introduce a Russian-style system of party lists and extended presidential authority in the regions. Then, once spoiler parties had been set up to split the opposition vote and the more dangerous looking rivals had been disqualified on technicalities, early parliamentary elections in December gave Ak Zhol a landslide.

So by New Year 2008, Bakiyev had a pliant parliament modeled on the Russian State Duma, even down to the detail of giving the Communists and Social Democrats a handful of seats in order to maintain a fig-leaf of multi-party democracy. It was this “parliament” that voted to close the Manas airbase in February this year (though despite reports to the contrary, U.S. forces are still there. Under and agreement reached in June, the Americans were allowed to stay after agreeing to call it a “transit center” instead of an “airbase,” allow the Kyrgyz to handle security, and crucially, pay three times more rent).

So far so good. No one can deny that Putin is an attractive role model for an ambitious leader looking to hang on to power. But Putin’s success is also based on a mixture of genuine popularity and popular apathy, something much more difficult to fix than an election.

And that is important. Whether they like it or not, most Russian opposition leaders would admit that most people voted for Putin’s protege Dmitry Medvedev at the last presidential election. In contrast, a Kyrgyz news agency reported Saturday that Amazbek Atambayev, one of the opposition candidates, was claiming to have won as much as sixty percent of the vote. The coming days will tell whether Bakiyev’s (official) 85 percent landslide will stand up in the street.