Parliamentary election in Uzbekistan in 1999

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Logo of the People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan , which emerged as the strongest party in the parliamentary election

The 1999 parliamentary elections in Uzbekistan took place in December 1999 in the Republic of Uzbekistan . The 250 members of the Uzbek parliament were elected .

background

After the end of the five-year legislative period following the parliamentary elections in Uzbekistan in 1994/95 , regular parliamentary elections were held in December 1999. The first ballot was held on December 5th. If none of the candidates in his constituency succeeded in gaining an absolute majority of the votes, there was a second ballot on December 19, in which the two best-placed candidates from the first ballot compete against each other in a runoff .

There were three possible ways of running for parliamentary elections. First, as a nominee for regional decision-making bodies, including district governments and city councils, second, as a party candidate, requiring 50,000 signatures from supporters, and third, as an independent candidate, with the signature of at least 8% of eligible voters in a constituency. The nomination of independent candidates was considered difficult due to the high number of signatures and the dependence on the authorities for submitting and verifying the signatures, but was noticed by numerous citizen movements who were able to nominate candidates for the election.

Election campaign

In the run-up to the presidential election, there was no active election campaign on the part of the political parties. This was due on the one hand to strict regulations regarding the financing of the election campaign and restrictions on the freedom of assembly , and on the other hand to the minor differences in content between the five participating parties, all of whom expressed positive views on President Islom Karimov's policy . In addition, the state control over the major media in the country prevented a broad political debate.

Distribution of seats in the Uzbek parliament after the 1999 election

Result

After the first ballot on December 5, one of the candidates in 184 electoral districts was able to show an absolute majority of the votes, and a second ballot was held in 66 electoral districts. Finally, the following picture emerged for the distribution of the seats:

Political party elected in the first ballot elected in the second ballot Total MPs
People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan 32 16 48
Fidocorlar 19th 15th 34
Progress party 9 11 20th
Adolat 9 2 11
Milliy Tiklanis 6th 4th 10
Independent 11 5 16
local nominees 98 12 110
vacant - - 1

The People's Democratic Party, whose former chairman was then President Karimov, became the strongest force in the Uzbek parliament, ahead of the Fidokorlar party, which Karimov nominated as its candidate in the 2000 presidential election in Uzbekistan and must therefore also be classified as loyal to the regime . As in the previous election, the candidates nominated at the local level formed the largest bloc in parliament and largely supported President Karimov's course. Despite the high hurdles in the nomination, the independent candidate managed to win 16 seats in parliament.

The newly composed parliament met for the first time on January 22, 2000.

rating

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe did not send a full-fledged observer mission to protest the obvious shortcomings of Uzbek democracy and its elections, but only a smaller group of 17 observers. They again came to the conclusion that the election can be classified as neither free nor fair. The reasons for this were the by no means pluralistic environment before the election, the lack of political debates, the restriction of basic rights and the omnipresent influence of the authorities in the electoral process and the associated prevention of oppositional movements.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ OSCE (ed.): REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN ELECTION OF DEPUTIES TO THE OLIY MAJLIS . Warsaw April 2000.
  2. ↑ Uzbekistan's Parliamentary Elections: Business As Usual (Except For One Thing). Retrieved March 22, 2020 (English).
  3. ↑ UZBEKISTAN: parliamentary elections Oliy Majlis, 1999. Retrieved March 22, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Pamela Blackmon: Back to the USSR: why the past does matter in explaining differences in the economic reform processes of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan . In: Central Asian Survey . tape 24 , no. 4 , December 1, 2005, ISSN  0263-4937 , p. 391-404 , doi : 10.1080 / 02634930500453285 .