Qishloq Ovozi (Archive)

The day after Kyrgyzstan conducted parliamentary elections on October 5, 2020, crowds poured into the streets and squares of the capital, Bishkek.

They protested corruption in the vote that produced a parliament dominated by government supporters.

But many also protested the system that failed to act against the abuses that were obvious during the campaign and on election day.

What many wanted -- particularly younger people -- on that day was something new, a clear departure from the same people carrying out politics as usual in Kyrgyzstan.

One Year Later

The elections on November 28 will be a rerun of the failed 2020 parliamentary elections, which were annulled by the Central Election Commission (BShK) on October 6.

By that time the government had already fallen and shortly thereafter, on October 15, President Sooronbai Jeenbekov resigned.

With the mandate of the parliamentary deputies due to expire on October 28, the BShK on October 17 proposed new parliamentary elections be conducted on December 20, 2020.

Instead, there have been elections in 2021 for president, local elections, a vote on whether to have a referendum to change the system of government (which was approved), and then the actual referendum on changing the constitution and taking Kyrgyzstan from a presidential-parliamentary to a purely presidential form of government.

And now Kyrgyzstan is finally going to vote for new deputies to replace the deputies who have stayed in parliament for more than a year after their terms officially expired and who approved many significant and sometimes controversial changes during that year.

What Is Parliament Now?

The adoption of a new constitution this year changed the structure and powers of parliament.

The number of seats in parliament will be reduced from the current 120 to 90, and in the upcoming elections 54 of those seats will be elected by party lists and 36 in single-mandate districts.

A "kuriltai," or people's council, was given official status and powers parallel to the parliament. This body can, for example, propose legislation.

The president has been given sweeping powers and can, among other things, appoint cabinet members, appoint or dismiss the prosecutor-general and judges, initiate laws and referendums, and strip parliamentary deputies of their immunity.

But parliament does remain a forum for politicians with an eye looking toward the future to maintain their public exposure.

There have been three revolutions in Kyrgyzstan since 2005 and the fortunes of Kyrgyzstan's leading political figures have changed many times.

Current President Sadyr Japarov is a perfect example. He was a deputy from 2007 to 2010, winning a seat as a candidate from the pro-presidential party Ak Jol, and was also a top official in the anti-corruption agency at that time.

Then-President Kurmanbek Bakiev was overthrown in April 2010, during Kyrgyzstan's second revolution.

Japarov was elected as deputy again in 2010 when he ran as a candidate from the Ata-Jurt party, but then he was arrested as he tried to storm the parliament building in October 2012. He was later tried and convicted of attempting to overthrow the government.

Japarov was released after a few months, but shortly later was accused of involvement in the attempted kidnapping of an official in the northeastern Issyk-Kul Province.

Japarov fled Kyrgyzstan, finally returning in 2017, whereupon he was arrested, tried, and convicted of attempted kidnapping and sentenced to 11 1/2 years in prison.

And he was in a jail cell when the unrest started after the October 2020 parliamentary elections. Released from prison during the chaos of the uprising last year, Japarov was later elected president. He has now been in charge of the country since he accepted Jeenbekov's resignation.

The lesson of Japarov is nothing new in Kyrgyzstan. Other politicians have gone from parliament to prison to top positions in the government -- not necessarily always in that order -- as the case of former President Almazbek Atambaev shows.

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Parliamentary elections are also important because there are always some deputies who use their positions to criticize government decisions.

And despite the president's new ability to strip lawmakers of their immunity, there will most likely still be some deputies who will publicly challenge some of Japarov's moves, and this gives voice to at least some public grievances and serves to check presidential authority.

Much Seems Too Familiar

In the 2020 parliamentary elections there were 16 parties competing. In these elections, there will be 21 parties competing, eight of which took part in the 2020 elections.

The Birimdik and Mekenim Kyrgyzstan parties, which won 46 and 45 seats, respectively, in the 2020 elections, will not be on the ballot this time.

The other pro-government party, the Kyrgyzstan party, won 16 seats in the last parliamentary elections and is on the ballot again, teaming up with the Ata-Jurt party.

Ata-Jurt was once headed by Kamchybek Tashiev, currently the chief of the State Committee for National Security (UKMK) and a longtime friend of Japarov. Ata-Jurt won the most seats in the 2010 elections (28) and the second-most seats (28) in the 2015 elections when it joined forces with the Respublika party.

Ata-Jurt did not participate in the 2020 elections, but some of its members joined other parties to run in those elections. Former members of Birimdik and Mekenim Kyrgyzstan have done the same for the upcoming elections.

Also running as a candidate from the Ata-Jurt Kyrgyzstan party is Bakyt Torobaev, who is still the leader of the Onuguu-Progress party, formed in 2012, which is not taking part in the upcoming elections.

For those who last year were calling for lustration, the names of many candidates trying to win seats in the next elections must look frustratingly familiar.

Former speaker of parliament and Ata-Meken leader Omurbek Tekebaev is running for a seat again, as is the former head of the Communist Party, Iskhak Masaliev, who ran as a candidate from Onuguu-Progress in 2015 and is running as a Butun Kyrgyzstan party candidate this time.

Butun Kyrgyzstan was the only opposition party to win seats in the 2020 elections and its leader, three-time presidential candidate Adakhan Madumarov, is running.

Another former speaker of parliament and onetime member of the Ata-Jurt party, Akhmatbek Keldibekov, is running as a candidate from the Azattyk party.

Current lawmaker Iskender Matraimov, brother of suspected underworld figure Raimbek Matraimov, is running in voting district No. 9 in the southern Kara-Suu district for a seat once held by his brother Tilek.

The list of retread politicians goes on and on.

It should also be noted that young politician Janarbek Akaev, 34, is a candidate in the Alyans party, which joins together the Bir Bol, Liberal Democratic Party, and Fair Kyrgyzstan parties. And entrepreneur Tilek Toktogaziev, 30, is a candidate in the Ata-Meken party. They are a few of the handful of candidates in their 30s who are participating.

For the many women who were hoping the ousting of the government in October 2020 would lead to more equal representation in a future government, the upcoming elections do not look promising.

Current legislation stipulates that at least 30 percent of the deputies must be women. But in practice that has not been the case.

The Bishkek Feminists group wrote in October 2020 that since roughly half the population is women, half the seats in parliament should go to women. That seems unlikely to happen in the upcoming elections, as only 377 of the 1,046 candidates competing are women.

When the revolution of October 2020 was hijacked by Japarov's supporters, the hopes of many young protesters -- and many women -- who were on the streets on October 5 and the days that followed were pushed aside.

These upcoming elections seem unable to do anything to fulfill the demands of a year ago. And that is dangerous, especially when the Japarov government is treading water at best, as there is little that could be called improvement in Kyrgyzstan since Japarov came to power.

Yet there are many signs of strain: from the struggling economy to the decrepit health-care system during the pandemic and security concerns along the border with Tajikistan and from Afghanistan.

Despite all of that, Japarov reportedly remains popular.

People in Kyrgyzstan knew that a rough winter was coming.

But because Kyrgyzstan had deals to import electricity from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, it seemed to have solved some of its critical energy problems this winter.

Now all three of those countries recently stopped sending electricity to Kyrgyzstan and it is unclear if any of them will be able to help keep the lights on in Kyrgyzstan in the coming months.

A report on November 19 cited the Kyrgyz Energy Ministry as saying the country had already received all of the promised electricity from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan under the deals.

And there is another problem.

A severe drought has badly hurt the primary domestic source of energy for Kyrgyzstan, which is hydropower.

Kyrgyzstan will allow some water through its massive Toktogul hydropower plant (HPP) to generate some domestic electricity as it usually does during the winter. But water levels are already critically low and the country needs the reservoir to be as full as possible for other reasons.

Though the water is in a Kyrgyz reservoir, but it does not belong solely to Kyrgyzstan despite the protests of a few politicians who believe it should be considered a state commodity.

Downstream countries Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan depend on the water in the spring and summer for their vast agricultural fields.

The Toktogul HPP and reservoir is about 45 years old and when it was built during the Soviet era a scheme was devised whereby Kyrgyzstan stored water in the reservoir during the autumn and winter and released it during the agricultural season.

The Kazakh and Uzbek Soviet Republics provided electricity and natural gas to Kyrgyzstan during the autumn and winter, and during the spring and summer when the gates at the reservoir were opened wide, the four turbines at the Toktogul HPP provided electricity to parts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

It was an arrangement that benefitted everyone, but that scheme fell apart after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

A series of negotiations then started between the independent states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan to try to come up with a new system of sharing power and ensuring water supplies.

The burden of maintaining Toktogul fell upon Kyrgyzstan and compensation from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan was sometimes very lean.

Uzbekistan reduced or entirely turned off the gas supplies due to nonpayment, although many suspected it was also done for political reasons against Bishkek. Kazakhstan eventually agreed to send coal to Kyrgyzstan for the winter, but in a notorious incident in October 2011, coal from Kazakhstan’s Kolan mine that was sent to Kyrgyzstan turned out to be radioactive and the Kyrgyz had to retrieve it send it back to Kazakhstan.

Thirty years after independence, cooperation between the five Central Asian states is at an all-time high. As an example, parched Kyrgyzstan was relieved earlier this year when Uzbekistan pledged to export some 750 million kWh to Bishkek during the autumn-winter period and Kazakhstan promised 900 million kWh.

Though all of that electricity has been supplied to Kyrgyzstan, there is another source.

On November 11, the Kyrgyz Energy Ministry announced a deal to continue importing electricity from Turkmenistan, something that started for the first time since independence in August of this year.

The deal was long under consideration by both parties but impossible for many years due to the obstinance of former Uzbek leader Islam Karimov to allow Turkmen electricity to transit Uzbek territory on its way to Kyrgyzstan.

Such an arrangement would have threatened the leverage Tashkent had over Bishkek as the only gas provider to Kyrgyzstan, so Karimov simply refused his country’s transit services in the Turkmen-Kyrgyz electricity agreement.

When Shavkat Mirziyoev became Uzbek president in late 2016, he quickly worked to improve ties with all of Uzbekistan’s neighbors, including Kyrgyzstan.

But during the years Karimov was in power, the high-voltage transmission lines connecting Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan had fallen into decay and it was only recently that replacement and repair work was carried out.

Kyrgyzstan has not yet been forced to implement power rationing on households and the government is promising not to do that this winter.

But in late September, restrictions on electricity use were introduced for businesses and other nonhousehold objects.

Tajikistan has supplied electricity to Kyrgyzstan in recent years but after the armed conflict between the two countries at the end of April, such an agreement was in doubt.

Recent talks between Bishkek and Dushanbe seemed to have yielded a breakthrough -- but in the end Tajikistan decided not to export electricity to Kyrgyzstan.

To be fair, Tajikistan is even more dependent on hydropower than Kyrgyzstan, and Tajik authorities find themselves in the same predicament as Kyrgyzstan with not enough energy for domestic consumption.

To complicate matters for Kyrgyzstan, the electricity stopped flowing from Turkmenistan on November 15 due to an accident along the power line in Uzbekistan caused by a thick dust storm that hit Uzbekistan in early November.

It was of such importance that Kyrgyz Energy Minister Bekmurzaev said the same day he would travel to Uzbekistan to discuss the situation while also try to convince Uzbekistan to resume electricity exports.

Bekmurzaev also said negotiations were ongoing with other countries for electricity imports, specifically naming Russia.

The power-line problem in Uzbekistan will reportedly soon be repaired and Turkmen electricity should resume flowing to Kyrgyzstan.

But there appear to be other problems on the horizon.

With the possible exception of Turkmenistan, all of the Central Asian countries are experiencing domestic power problems and it is early in the season.

Depending on how large these domestic power problems become, it could soon turn into a situation where the countries are unable to meet their own electricity needs and will have none to spare -- even for a neighbor.

And Kyrgyzstan cannot even pay for the electricity it is receiving right now.

The deals Kyrgyzstan has with its neighbors call for delayed repayment or a return of the electricity from Kyrgyzstan’s HPPs next summer.

Cash-strapped Turkmenistan might soon find this arrangement unappealing, especially if Iran asks to import more Turkmen electricity.

And Uzbekistan also has a deal to import Turkmen electricity. But if Tashkent is faced with crippling outages, as it was in January, the question will be: do Uzbek authorities allow the smooth transfer of the electricity bound for Kyrgyzstan or reroute some of it for Uzbekistan’s needs?

Certainly, the neighbors are showing a desire to help Kyrgyzstan through the winter, but Kyrgyzstan might need to temper its expectations as to how much help -- in the form of electricity -- will actually arrive.

RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Azattyk, contributed to this report.