Deputies decide to lower electoral deposit, 9 percent threshold

Deputies of the Parliament of Kyrgyzstan offer to lower the amount of electoral deposit to one million soms. Deputy Mirlan Zheenchoroev told 24.kg news agency.
The draft document submitted by the initiators to the parliamentary committee on constitutional legislation, state structure, judicial, legal issues, and regulations also proposes to lower the electoral threshold from 9 to 5 percent.
Authors of the amendments ask to recognize the Paragraph 30 of Article 1 of the Constitutional Law dated June 5, 2017 on Amending the Constitutional Law of the Kyrgyz Republic on the Election of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic and Deputies of the Parliament of the Kyrgyz Republic, which stipulates establishment of a threshold of 9 percent and the electoral deposit for political parties in the amount of 5 million soms invalid.
"The essence of the proportional election system is to provide an opportunity to be represented in the Parliament by different political forces representing the interests of various segments of the population. In the current situation, the threshold of 9 percent will limit the proportional representation of various political forces in the Parliament, as well as the constitutional rights of citizens to representation in the Parliament," Mirlan Zheenchoroev explained.
The artificially raised threshold cuts off, as international practice shows, up to 40-50 percent of the votes, which simply will not be represented in the Parliament.
Mirlan Zheenchoroev Note, the regulation on amendments to the election law a year before the start of the campaign itself was canceled. "Therefore, we can make amendments an unlimited number of times, at least until the fall of 2020. Moreover, all previous changes are canceled with the entry into force of the new ones. We ask you to lower the threshold, because elections may not take place at 9 percent," Iskhak Masaliev explained to 24.kg news agency and added that the draft law on reducing the threshold and deposit was submitted to the relevant committee.
The set threshold of 9 percent and the amount of deposit caused a lot of controversy. Experts called these points failure and working in favor of the oligarchs. Before summer recess, the Parliament approved a package of changes, including the scandalous amendments. The President Sooronbai Jeenbekov signed the approved version.