Kyrgyz Ruling Party to Split?
Talk of defections follows death of key player in Ak Jol.
Kyrgyz Ruling Party to Split?
Talk of defections follows death of key player in Ak Jol.
Some politicians are predicting that Sadyrkulov’s allies will leave Ak Jol and go over to the opposition.
Sadyrkulov was President Kurmanbek Bakiev’s chief of staff until January, when he resigned as part of a larger reshuffle.
The authorities have not yet formally confirmed that Sadyrkulov was among those who died in a car accident on March 13. They were awaiting definitive results from DNA testing conducted in Russia. However, citing a source in the Kyrgyz prosecution service, the 24.kg news site reported on March 30 that the test results had come in and confirmed that one of the dead was indeed Sadyrkulov, the others being the former head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Sergei Slepchenko, and the driver of the car they were in when it was hit by another vehicle, Kubat Sulaymanov.
Opposition politicians have alleged that Sadyrkulov was assassinated for political reasons, although there is no real evidence to support this. The interior ministry is treating the matter as a traffic accident, and is not looking at it as a possible murder case. (For more on this, see Kyrgyz Politician’s Death Widens Opposition-Government Gulf, RCA No. 570, 16-Mar-09.)
Ak Jol was set up in October 2007 with Bakiev as its leader, and just two months it won a landslide election victory, taking 71 of the 90 seats in parliament. As a result, government initiatives have had an easy ride through the legislature since then.
The party was forged out a number of major political groups like Sadyrkulov’s Moya Strana and the Party of Labour and Unity, set up by two brothers of the president, Janysh and Jusup Bakiev, as well as several smaller ones, and now numbers over 100,000 members.
Appointed to head the then newly-elected president’s administration in 2007, Sadyrkulov was seen as a key ally of Bakiev, helping him weather a series of anti-government demonstrations, and later weakening the opposition by coopting several of its members.
It is unclear how many of his supporters Sadyrkulov brought to the new party, but an anonymous source in Ak Jol says they include 15 current members of parliament.
When the party was established, experts predicted that things would not go smoothly since it was effectively a coalition of diverse elite groupings representing the north and south of Kyrgyzstan, an important political divide in this country.
The January reshuffle was seen by analysts as a power-struggle among rival elite factions, in which Sadyrkulov found himself on the losing side.
After leaving office, Sadyrkulov is said by opposition members to have been manoeuvring to reposition himself on the political landscape.
“I have heard from several opposition leaders that theу had meetings with Sadyrkulov,” said Bakyt Beshimov, who heads the tiny Social Democrat faction in parliament.
“Furthermore, he disagreed with Bakiev’s actions and felt guilty for being involved in such negative policies. Some opposition politicians say he wanted to make amends for his past actions.”
Sadyrkulov’s death seems to have brought these divisions out into the open. An anonymous source in parliament told IWPR that several Ak Jol legislators fear not only that they will lose their posts, but that their own lives may be at risk.
The source said these members of parliament believe that after the accident, “something like that could happen to anyone”.
“Although many people are upset, no one can speak out for fear of losing their [parliamentary] posts,” said the source.
Elmira Ibraimova, a key ally of Sadyrkulov, stepped down as deputy prime minister after he departed from the presidential office. She too says the politician was working to build up new political support.
“He said he couldn’t remain a bystander and watch how arbitrary rule gained strength and a tribal form of government was revived,” said Ibraimova.
The clearest evidence of a rift in Ak Jol came when Ibraimova was removed from the party leadership – she was its deputy chair – after suggesting that what happened on March 13 was “nothing other than a political murder”.
Ibraimova says she is so disappointed that she is thinking of resigning from the party altogether.
“Most of Ak Jol’s members are good people who joined it because they believed in the idea of a people’s party, just as I did,” she said. “The party has failed to achieve all its aims.”
Some Ak Jol legislators insisted to IWPR that there were no divisions in their ranks. But Ulugbek Ormonov, who heads the party in parliament, admitted that there was some turbulence.
“Ak Jol is made up of members from several parties. Of course, each of them used to have its own political agenda, and there was some talk that these parties would face certain difficulties if they were brought together,” he said. “Following Sadyrkulov’s death, many members of parliament now have questions and doubts. I think the investigation will be able to assuage these.”
Ormonov was critical of Ibraimova for attending a public meeting held by the main opposition coalition, the United People’s Movement, UPM, the day after the accident in which Sadyrkulov died.
“The fact that she attended a meeting of the UPM, which calls for the resignation of Bakiev, Ak Jol’s leader, shows that she has made her choice,” he said. “Anyone who has any doubts should decide what to do, return their membership card and leave the party.”
Ak Jol legislator Alisher Mamasaliyev told IWPR that “there have been no changes in the [parliamentary party] faction’s activities”.
“I do not see any discord within the party, and I do not think Sadyrkulov’s supporters are going to be squeezed out of the party,” he said. “That would only weaken the party, and would benefit no one. The only people talking about a rift are those who want it to happen, who want to fragment the party and to disband parliament altogether.”
Mamasaliev was referring to opposition parties and human rights groups which say the current parliament is not legitimate because the December 2007 ballot results were, in their view, rigged.
At the same time, Joomart Saparbayev of Ata Meken, which is the most powerful of the opposition parties but is not represented in parliament, does not believe Ak Jol is about to split quite yet, although he predicts this will happen later on, albeit for different reasons.
“Sadyrkulov’s people have been passive on the issue of the accident investigation,” he said, explaining why he thought these members were not about to storm out of the party.
“There will be a rift, but not in the near future. I am certain the party as a whole will turn its back on Bakiev when the situation becomes shaky. First of all, it isn’t a party, it’s a group of people who got together to lobby their interests in parliament. Secondly, they don’t have ideological values in common, and thirdly…. if they speak up, they will lose their seats.”
Political analyst Mars Sariev says the death of Sadyrkulov has stirred up Ak Jol’s internal politics and left northerners feeling vulnerable.
“Sadyrkulov represented the interests of the northern elite and brought some balance to Bakiev’s team,” he explained. It was heightened tensions between [different elite] different groups… that led to a presidential election being called for this summer.”
After a ruling by Kyrgyzstan’s Constitutional Court that the next presidential election must take place before the end of October this year, rather than in 2010 as many had anticipated, parliament set a much earlier date of July 23. (See our report on this, Surprise Early Polls for Kyrgyzstan, RCA No. 570, 20-Mar-09.)
As the UPM began the first in a series of planned anti-government rallies all around the country on March 27, analysts were watching to see whether any potential defectors from Ak Jol would make an appearance. No leading figures attended.
Anara Yusupova is a pseudonym for an independent journalist in Bishkek.
