Local self government as a way for Kyrgyz citizens to participate in state governance
Round Table Summary
On November 28th, 2007 the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) hosted a Round Table on "Local Self-Government as a way for Kyrgyz citizens to participate in state governance". The experts were: Bahtiyarjan Fattahov, stats-secretary of the KR National Agency on Local Self-Government; Sabyr Bainazarov, Chair of the KR Municipalities Association; Aleksei Krasin Director of the Local Self-Government Development Agency; Nadejda Dobretzova, Urban Institute "Decentralization and Local Self-Government" Project Officer; Anarbek Ismailov, senior lawyer of the "Decentralization and Local Self-Government" project; Gulnara Iskakova, Deputy Director of the "Parliament Capacity Building" Program, MSI.
IPP President, Muratbek Imanaliev moderated the round table. In his speech, he stated that the issue of local self-government issue was practically omitted in the light of the political events in the last two years.
"In my opinion, the issues of the local self-government reform were beyond public attention, and achievements in this area were understated." -said the IPP President, adding that on the present stage, reform requires the special attention of the government and independent experts.
Bahtiyarjan Fattahov has also supported this thought, emphasizing that the new Constitution has made a step back in terms of local self-government: "The emphasis of the Constitution of 2003 was local communities, while after the November and December amendments to the Main Law of the state, Local Kenesh took its place. Based on the new edition we have moved away from the direct elections of heads of rural councils to indirect elections, where they are elected on the recommendation of akims (heads of regional administration). Of course, we have lost this momentum and thus local self-government has lost some political and administrative autonomy."
Mr. Fattahov added that there are positive achievements in the development of local self government, which is strengthening of its financial independence.
"60% of rural councils this year became self-sustainable which is a big breakthrough compared to 11% last year" -Mr. Fattahov said.
«Based on statistics and experts' data, some objects of local self-government have increased their sustainability by 800-1000%. These are excellent indicators. It is worth noting that these are the positive outcomes of the financial decentralization" - said Anarbek Ismailov, and he added that local self-government rests on three entities: financial, administrative and political independence.
According to experts, the last aspects have raised concerns lately: administrative and political autonomies were lost with the passing of the last Constitution, and correspondingly some rights of local communities were violated, such as the right to create institutions for the effective resolution of local issues, to elect heads and to have an opportunity to hold them accountable.
"New state management knows how the techniques foresee the redistribution of authorities. Part of the authority of national governments should be transferred to the local level. This has been a global trend in the last 20-30 years. Most forms of ‘vertical' government are hardly effective and are expensive governments. Few profit from it. Due to limited resources, Kyrgyzstan must develop local self-government. Russia and Kazakhstan ensure vertical government using reserve funds. Strong local self-government is unavoidable. Just use common sense" - Nadezhda Dobretzova suggested.
According to her, departing from administrative and political independence will negatively influence the efficiency of state management in general.
Anarbek Ismailov also supports this opinion: "The efficiency of governance is in narrowing down authority and reaching out to the local community as much as possible. The process of feedback is very important here. Now there is a risk that the heads of local self-government will write "inflated" reports for higher officials, since now they believe that they are accountable to bodies of executive power and not local community."
Gulnara Iskakova presented her own vision of the issue. She thinks that currently the process of local self-government is experiencing a crisis, while state management is moving towards stricter centralization.
"Kyrgyzstan has made progressive steps once but today we witness absolute indifference to the interests of local communities. However, population inhabits regions and provinces as well as cities and villages, which we tend to forget. The principle of power division that was one democratic achievement has been violated. The process of democratization that started with the division of the legislative and executive branches of government, and the principle of the division of responsibilities brought down to local levels has stopped."
According to an expert, citizens of Kyrgyzstan had to solve their issues through local self-government instead of participating in state governance.
Some participants of the discussion agreed with the opinion that government decentralization is not profitable for officials, especially during the election period, due to a loss of control over local communities that, based on experts assessment, are by now ready to participate in decision making processes.
"I am confident that dependency tendencies are not dominating at grass roots. Decentralization is favorable not only from an economical point of view but we should also act in the interests of the population in the regions. Central authorities are not capable of fully satisfying the interests of local communities, meaning they need to delegate certain authorities to local self-government" - said Gulnara Iskakova.
Participants emphasized the need to take immediate steps for strengthening self-government, and in particular some experts' recommendations were to organize a functional analysis of decentralization indicators, to purposefully work on sustaining financial independence of local self-government bodies. Special attention was received by the recommendation for achieving larger authorities in the administrative and political independence of local communities by encouraging the discussion of these issues on a legislative level. That discussion can help to rethink the corresponding articles of the Main Law of the State. It was also suggested to update the strategy of government decentralization, to establish the cooperation of local self-government bodies with the Ministry of Finance, and to advance the process related to any decrease of one government level in regions and to foster more efficient struggle against corruption at the grass roots.
Experts have also agreed that all participants of the public political process should reconsider the methods of civil participation in the decision making process, to encourage independent problem solving; i.e. to organize a process of public participation, to train them on the municipal formats of filing, to tell them about the mechanisms of local self-government, and to increase community spirit by encouraging self-funding initiatives.
