Kyrgyzstan parliamentary elections 2020: ODIHR observation mission final report

The 2020 parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan were conducted under improved legislation, and fundamental rights and freedoms were respected overall. While the campaign was competitive and generally well-managed despite the COVID-19 pandemic, credible allegations of vote buying and questions about the impartiality of relevant institutions raised serious concern.

These are some of the main conclusions from the final report on Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary elections of 4 October 2020, as published by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

The final report offers 25 recommendations to closer align elections in the Kyrgyz Republic with OSCE commitments, and other international obligations and standards for democratic elections.  

Recommendations

Key recommendations include:

• Making robust efforts to address the persistent issue of vote-buying and pressure on voters

• Ensuring media freedom, unimpeded access to information and a safe environment for journalists, without interference in their activities

• Enabling transparency of campaign funding by submitting annual financial reports

• Ensuring that candidate deregistration is an exceptional measure applied only in case of gross violations of the law

• Considering banning the broadcasting of campaign material within news and current affairs programmes

• Ensuring that law-enforcement bodies duly and efficiently investigate cases of vote-buying and abuse of administrative resource

• Upholding the secrecy of the voting according to legal provisions

ODIHR deployed a Limited Election Observation Mission on 7 September 2020 to observe the parliamentary elections. All 57 countries across the OSCE region have formally committed to following up promptly on ODIHR’s election assessments and recommendations.