KYRGYZSTAN TODAY Policy briefs on - Department of Geography

There were attempts to build the party system in Kyrgyzstan during the Perestroika
period in the late 1980s. An example of this process was the “Democratic Movement of
Kyrgyzstan” party (DMK). The legal conditions for the emergence of political parties
in sovereign Kyrgyzstan were created by the relevant provisions of the Constitution
and the law, adopted in 1999 [4]. However, the relative absence or weakness of existing
political parties in Kyrgyzstan up until the last two or three years and, at the same time,
self-sufficiency and decisive actions by the country’s NGOs in critical situations for the
past five years, has led to increased credibility of NGOs among the population and
the international community. At the same time, it has led to a bitter debate about the
politicization of NGOs in Kyrgyzstan.
This article discusses possible ways to ensure effective cooperation between NGOs
and political parties, and provides recommendations based on the analysis of such
cooperation in Kyrgyzstan as well as the experience of other countries.
NGOs and Political Parties: Emergence of the Institutions and their Cooperation
Modern civil society in Kyrgyzstan, in particular NGOs, owe their emergence
and formation to the international experience [14, pp. 64-65]. For the past fifteen years,
international organizations such as USAID, the “Eurasia” Foundation, the “Soros-
Kyrgyzstan” Foundation, Counterpart Int. and their projects have greatly contributed
to the NGO sector development in Kyrgyzstan. In general, the projects of local NGOs,
supported by international donors, may be divided into two groups. The first group of
grants was aimed at strengthening the NGOs themselves (e.g., creation or strengthening
their resource base, training of the staff). The second group of grants was aimed directly at
addressing social problems. Analysis of the funding policies of international foundations
also suggested some conclusions. For example, the “Eurasia” Foundation, an organization
with private management [28, p. 2], supports the private, governmental and NGO sectors
and is, perhaps, the second organization of this kind, following the example of USAID.
Despite the large number of target groups, the international organizations had no idea of
supporting the projects aimed to develop cooperation between the sectors, not to mention
specific institutions. This trend existed until 2008 [19; 20; 38]. The reports of the abovementioned
and other international organizations had no information on the support of
joint initiatives of various sectors or political parties. The only exception is an operating
project of the Ethnic Program of the “Soros-Kyrgyzstan” Foundation (“Methodological
Support of Ethnic Development of KR” [19]), which held a roundtable (21/11/2005),
attended by the representatives of the Government and civil society, which recognized
the role of political parties in solving ethnic problems [9, pp. 14-15].
Planning their grant activities, international organizations follow the principle of
“non-interference in the country politics”, so they refrain from supporting any initiatives
of political parties, because such support may be regarded as an “interference of foreign
states and their organizations into the internal politics”, which is unacceptable [see 4,
ch. 3, Art. 16].
Here the conceptual contradictions in determining the nature of political parties
should be described. The generally accepted definition of “civil society” describes
political parties as “an element or an institution” of civil society [see 1, p. 48; 8, p. 137;
13, p. 63; 16, p. 432; 22, p. 62]. Civil society is defined as a set of non-political voluntary
associations of citizens, assisting the state in solving social problems. By their nature and
purpose, “political parties are voluntary associations of citizens of the Kyrgyz Republic,
who share common political objectives and tasks of implementing the political will of a
47