Back in December 2019, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev addressed the issue of opposition parties in Uzbekistan.

“As president, I am not against opposition, but we need to create an environment for it to appear here,” he said.

The conditions for any opposition movement or party to be registered in Uzbekistan, Mirziyoyev said, were that the group must “know the problems of the people, have experienced all the problems, drank the water here and eaten bread here.”

Well, such a group might have just emerged, and it is the oldest political party in Uzbekistan.

Defection or political theatre?

On May 13, the People’s Democratic Party of Uzbekistan, more commonly known in Uzbekistan by the abbreviation of its name in Uzbek, HDP (Halq Demokratik Partiyasi), declared that it was now an opposition party in parliament.

HDP leader Ulughbek Inoyatov said the party was making the move “in order to convey the voice of the electorate to the parliament and government, effectively protect [the electorate’s] interests and continue to implement a strong social policy in the country.”

To be clear, Inoyatov’s statement was in no way a criticism of the president’s policies, even though ultimately no policy is implemented in Uzbekistan without the president’s approval.

This is about an internal feud within parliament.

In 2019, President Mirziyoyev said that for an opposition to appear in Uzbekistan, “we need to create an environment for it to appear here” (Credit: kremlin.ru). 

Uzbekistan has a law that says “it is possible” for a party to declare itself an opposition party “if the party does not agree with the government's course and programme or with individual policies within [the government's course and programme].”

HDP’s issue in this case is the decision of two other parties – the Liberal Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (LDPU) and Milli Tiklanish (National Revival) party – to form a majority bloc in parliament called the Progressive Bloc.

Inoyatov said his party did “not object to the creation of this bloc,” but proceeded to list a few policies that the HDP does not agree, such as “insufficient attention to maintaining state participation in the economy.., lack of a clear long-term strategy to support the socially vulnerable…” and “weak government control in the pharmaceutical sector…”.

Inoyatov named some of the “tasks” ahead of his party as an opposition group,  such as giving a “critical assessment of the implementation of the government's action programme on socio-economic issues…” or taking a “principled political position on bills and current issues discussed in parliament…”

Downward trajectory

The HDP is the heir to the Communist Party that existed when Uzbekistan was a Soviet republic.

The last Soviet-era leader of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was Islam Karimov, who stayed on as president of newly independent Uzbekistan. Karimov had headed the Uzbek republic’s Communist Party, and after independence the party changed into the HDP and Karimov continued on as its leader.

Other political parties, all pro-government with one temporary exception, were registered in the first years after independence. They were Vatan Taraqqiyoti (Fatherland Development) in 1992, the Adolat (Justice) Social Democratic Party in 1994, and Milli Tiklanish in 1995.

The HDP held the most seats in parliament of any party throughout the 1990s. Karimov left the HDP in 1996 and in the 2000 presidential election ran as the candidate of the Fidokorlar (Self-Sacrificers) party founded at the end of 1998.

Karimov’s sole opponent in the 2000 election was Abdulhafiz Jalolov, the HDP leader. But Jalolov exited the polling booth on election day and announced to the waiting media that he had cast his own ballot for Karimov.

Symbolically, it was a watershed moment in the fortunes of the HDP.

A new party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (LDPU), was founded in November 2003. The LDPU has won the most seats in the state-managed parliamentary elections ever since, and the winning candidate in every presidential election since then has run as the LDPU’s candidate.

Vatan Taraqqiyoti merged into Fidokorlar in 2000 and Fidokorlar merged into Milli Tiklanish in 2008. In every parliamentary election since 2008, Milli Tiklanish has taken the second largest number of seats.

In the last two parliamentary elections, the HDP has taken the least number of seats of the major parties, although HDP presidential candidates have at least run a distant second to the incumbent in most of the presidential elections.

The newest party, the Ecological Party, won the smallest number of seats in those two elections. However, it was founded in 2008 as the Ecological Movement, was allotted 15 seats in the next two parliamentary elections, and became a party, competing for places in parliament, only in 2019.

The unregistered opposition

There are genuine opposition parties in Uzbekistan.

The Erk Democratic party was founded in 1990, the last full year of existence of the Soviet Union. Erk was registered by the Justice Ministry on September 3, 1991, two days after Uzbekistan declared independence.

To this day, it is the only opposition party to have ever registered as such in Uzbekistan.

Erk had a candidate in the 1991 presidential election, Muhammad Solih, who received a surprising 12.7% of the votes in a heavily rigged poll. That was the last time a legitimate opposition figure was ever allowed to run for president in Uzbekistan. Subsequently, the government pressured Erk so much that Solih fled the country, the party was unable to remain active and its registration lapsed.

Members of Erk who had remained in the country, drinking the water and eating the bread, as President Mirziyoyev portrayed, attempted to register with the Justice Ministry in January 2020, but were rejected. Then-justice minister Ruslanbek Davletov told them Erk “is part of the past, forget about it."

Erk did not quit and attempted to show they were part of the present, and future.

In May 2021, Erk announced singer Jahongir Otajanov, born in 1978, as the party’s candidate for president in the election scheduled for October that year. Otajanov had tried to run as the candidate for the newly-formed Xalq Manfaatlari (People’s Interests) party, but that bid fell apart early in 2021.

Just prior to Erk’s official announcement that Otajanov would be their party’s candidate, a group of some 20 unknown individuals burst into Otajanov’s home in Tashkent shouting insults at him and pelting the walls with eggs. Otajonov was charged in June 2021 with insulting police on social media after police impounded his car. By July, he had withdrawn his candidacy and vowed to leave politics entirely.

Life was made difficult for Hidirnazar Allaqulov's Haqiqat va Taraqqiyot opposition party from the moment it was founded in 2021 (Credit: social media).

The Haqiqat va Taraqqiyot (Truth and Development) opposition party, led by former Termez University rector Hidirnazar Allaqulov, was founded in early 2021 and immediately faced difficulties. The party’s meetings were disrupted by outsiders.

Later, according to Allaqulov, unknown persons tried to start a fight with him outside his apartment building and while he avoided any fisticuffs, he was the only one charged with hooliganism.

Soon after, his party’s registration documents were rejected.

The HDP runs little risk of experiencing the sorts of problems Erk, Haqiqat va Taraqqiyot and other genuine Uzbek opposition parties and movements have faced.

The HDP’s transformation into an opposition party seems to be an experiment, using a registered party that, to use former Uzbek justice minister Davletov’s comments to Erk, “is part of the past.”

The HDP has a chance to reinvent itself and serve state interests by acting as a conduit to voice the public’s discontent. Leader Inyatov spoke of the electorate’s interests, but constituents of all the registered parties have similar interests and complaints.

At the end of the day, all five of Uzbekistan’s registered political parties are supporters of the president. They can bicker, or pretend to bicker, with each other to create some drama within an otherwise servile parliament, but they will all agree with any initiatives the president espouses.

The HDP acting in parliament as a champion of the people could infuse a new popularity into a flagging party and at the same time lend some extra credibility to the government by showing a party in parliament is raising the concerns of the people, on behalf of the people.