UZBEKISTAN EXPERIMENTS WITH CHECKS AND BALANCES
On July 15, unique hearings were held in the Oliy Majlis (Parliament) of Uzbekistan where a joint session of the Legislative Chamber and the Senate listened to the Prime Minister’s Report on measures taken by the Cabinet to further deepen democratic reforms and economic liberalization. The hearings were the first of their kind in terms of making the executive power accountable to the legislative power and demonstrating the introduction of a checks and balances system. The expected vote of no-confidence in the Prime Minister thus seems postponed.
BACKGROUND: Uzbekistan’s Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev reported before the Parliament on the course of reforms and the realization of the state program “The Year of Small Business and Private Entrepreneurship.” The Parliament evaluated that the government’s work does not meet the requirements indicated in the President’s stated ambitions to further deepen democratic reforms and to support the formation of a civil society.
The parliamentary resolution says that above all, the government should increase its efforts, since the reforms have not reached their planned results. “It is important to remove all barriers to the development of private ownership, ensure the adoption of legislative acts that support the openness of the economy and enhance the role of small business and private entrepreneurship,” the Resolution continues. It also points out that the issue of attracting private investors in all spheres of the economy should be resolved and that the unjustified and illegal interference of state agencies in the private sector as well as the adoption of extra bylaws are damaging the business climate and are therefore intolerable.
The Parliament expressed its concern with the lag of structural reforms in the economy, the development of high technological production spheres and the introduction of innovative technologies. Serious attention should also be given to the issue of diversifying the economy, where the quality of produced goods is especially important. The Parliament’s resolution contains a number of concrete examples of production companies, industrial objects, gas stations, road construction companies and others which are facing problems in realizing innovative modernization and technological innovation projects.
The resolution includes corresponding recommendations to the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finances, the State tax Committee, the Trade-Industrial Chamber, the Ministry of Justice, the Central Bank, provincial administrations as well as the Parliament itself.
IMPLICATIONS: The hearings in the Oliy Majlis were supposedly unprecedented in the new stage of political reforms. This stage is related to recent trends in Uzbekistan’s political process towards redistributing power between the legislative and executive branches. On November 12, 2010, at a joint session of the two parliamentary chambers of parliament, Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov advanced two interesting initiatives. Firstly, in case the incumbent is incapable of continuing his obligations in power, these obligations should be transferred to the Chairman of the Senate of the parliament. Secondly, the party winning most seats in parliament should nominate a candidate for Prime Minister. Besides, the parliament should be awarded the right to announce a vote of no confidence in the government.
Although these initiatives were given much attention by international observers and mass media, they were actually not fundamentally novel. In November 2006, the President advanced the Constitutional Law to increase the role of political parties in the democratization of governance and the country’s modernization. The law stipulates that any party’s parliamentary faction can announce itself to be in opposition and that the president nominates the Prime Minister after consultations with each faction. No parliamentary faction has since then claimed to be in opposition. Therefore, the president’s new initiative, albeit quite progressive in itself, faces a significant degree of skepticism.
On the eve of the hearings, allegations arose that the parliament would make use of the legislative power and its newly acquired right to issue a vote of no confidence to get rid of the Prime Minister. However, the critical text of the parliamentary resolution did not contain such a decision with respect to the Prime Minister. On the contrary, containing many common statements and recommendations to “speed up the reforms,” the resolution resembles a generally critical declaration rather than a concrete set of recommendations.
It is symptomatic and not accidental that although the Prime Minister’s report was devoted to the issue of further deepening democratic reforms and economic liberalization, both his report and the resolution of the Oliy Majlis focused mostly on economic issues, and not on democratic reforms. Both documents featured some evaluations concerning the liberalization of the economy but bypassed the problems of democratization.
One the one hand, the very fact that hearings were held and that the Prime Minister presented his report before the Parliament should in itself be regarded as a positive step. On the other hand, such a half-performance of parliamentary hearings indicates the existence of a hidden agenda unrelated to the economy or democracy as such, but likely related to the internal re-configuration of the political power structures. If this process continues, it can be expected that the vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister will finally be applied. However, this would largely imply a sophisticated and controlled circulation of people in power from above. In addition, the applicability of the instrument of a vote of no confidence can be questioned in the specific context of Uzbekistan, where the political culture is less inclined to openly dismiss high ranking officials than replacing them through smoother justifications.
CONCLUSIONS: The event of July 15 was an experiment for the Oliy Majlis itself, as it once again raised the question whether the Parliament is itself a pro-reform body or just a stage for serving the interests of political elites. It should be underlined that the executive institutions have their own space for maneuver defining their functions and responsibilities, and the Prime Minister’s report to the Parliament can hardly change those functions and responsibilities.
Indeed, the hearings made the impression that the Parliament courageously sent a warning message to the Prime Minister. But at the same time, the hearings revealed a predictable unanimity within the Parliament itself, since no faction of the Oliy Majlis dared to declare itself in opposition or to speak out on the deeper social, economic and political problems of the country which undermine the democratic reforms and economic liberalization. The hearings thus focused less on the content of the report than on the fact that the report was presented.
From this point, the process can develop in two directions simultaneously. First, the state power can be restructured and redistributed through checks and balances in favor of the legislative branch, strengthening the role of the Parliament in Uzbekistan’s political system. Second, the institution of a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister can be utilized to rejuvenate the political elite by the same means of checks and balances, but inside the elite itself. These two directions seem quite promising in terms of revitalizing political institutions. However, real democratic practice remains outside such reforms which, so far, touch on the form rather than the content of the political process.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Farkhod Tolipov holds a PhD in Political Science, and is an independent analyst based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
