Page 72 - bneMag February 2021_20210202

72 Opinion
bne February 2021
COMMENT:
Uzbekistan is being transformed, but where are the democratic reforms?
Fred Harrison in London
In his sweeping two and half hour end of year address to the Uzbek parliament, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev used the word “reform” 34 times. There was agricultural reform, judicial reform, reforms in education, health care and human rights, economic and banking reforms, administrative reforms, human rights reforms, and so on and so on. But strangely, in 10,881 words (in Uzbek; 13,492 in the English translation),
he mentioned democratic reform just three times.
It’s the elephant in the room at present in Uzbekistan. Eleven months from now, Mirziyoyev will face his second presidential election, having first been elected in December 2016 following the death of his authoritarian predecessor, Islam Karimov. No-one knows whether Mirziyoyev faces
a genuinely contested election or whether it will be, as
The Economist described the 2019 parliamentary vote,
just another “semi-serious election”.
Few doubt that Mirziyoyev is an energetic reformer. He has wrought vast changes to the economy and the way the state is managed. And there is much more on the way, from one
of the most ambitious privatisation programmes currently found in the world to the development of a whole new social support system intended to fight widespread poverty. But even as he catalogued his plans in his year-end address to the parliament, it was clear who is in charge. On matters large and small, national or local, Mirziyoyev was “instructing” legislators what needs to be done. For instance, in the wake of some recent headline-grabbing disasters and fires, he said, “In this regard, the Government is instructed to draft a law on the state of emergency and a programme to address these problems within two months.”
‘Important shift’
Sir Suma Chakrabarti, former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and now adviser to Mirziyoyev on economic development and governance, believes the speech marked an important
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In his end of year speech, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev used the word “reform” 34 times, but mentioned democratic reforms only three times, and then only in general terms.
shift on Uzbekistan’s reform journey. “President Mirziyoyev set out his vision for the ‘new Uzbekistan’,” Sir Suma said in an interview. “He made clear the link between reforms and what the public value such as jobs, better education and healthcare. He said that the private sector, not the state, would drive the economy in the coming years. And that public administration and regional leaders would be judged on their delivery for the people. And the president encouraged the government to listen more to the views of the citizen.”
And yet, there is that elephant in the room, political reform, to deal with. The clichéd old English-language metaphor may be familiar in Uzbekistan via its roots in neighbouring Russia,
“In his New Year’s speech President Shavkat Mirziyoyev used the word
“reform” 34 times, but he mentioned democratic reform just three times”
where the 19th Century poet Ivan Krylov wrote a short story about a man visiting a museum who examines all sorts of small items but completely overlooks an elephant.
Mirziyoyev seems well aware of his particular elephant’s existence. But in contrast to the attention given to the details of bank privatisation, improvements to rural schools or even fire safety regulations, his year-end address stuck to generalisations.
“The Central Electoral Commission should pay special attention to the organisation of the upcoming high-level elections on the basis of national legislation and generally