Referendum on the new Constitution of Kyrgyzstan will take place come Sunday, October 21. The population has been all for amendment of the Constitution ever since the Tulip Revolution in March 2005 when the said amendment was one of the central slogans. For some reason, however, the new generation of politicians that succeeded to Askar Akayev and his team seems afflicted with an odd form of amnesia with regard to its own promises to carry out the constitutional reforms.

Lacking the courage to tell society to forget about abandonment of the authoritarian presidential system Akayev had painstakingly installed, the new Kyrgyz authorities relied on a traditional weapon of bureaucracy - redtape. Barely a month after the Tulip Revolution (on April 25, 2005), the Jogorku Kenesh or national parliament ordered establishment of a special structure. The Constitutional Conference was set up to outline priorities of the much-needed constitutional reforms. Kurmanbek Bakiyev won the presidential race in a tandem with Felix Kulov and immediately ordered staff shuffles in the Constitutional Conference. Needless to say, its work was thoroughly disrupted, and the structure itself never actually recovered afterwards.

That was merely a curtain-raiser. Bakiyev kept changing his views on what contours of the regime the future Constitution was supposed to specify and on exactly what issues were to be offered for a nationwide referendum. In the meantime, Bakiyev was not exactly alone in the campaign that confused the issue. Many public politicians in Kyrgyzstan became eagerly involved in fruitless debates over the new Constitution and eventually discredited the whole idea of its amendment. Promises to make a bold step to democracy were easily given and as easily forgotten. Officials running the structures that worked on the draft Constitution were hired and fired on the basis of purely selfish considerations and fleeting interests of the powers-that-be (what happened to Beknazarov is a vivid example).

The Kyrgyz authorities were like a balloon, shifting this way and that whenever the wind changed direction. Nationwide discussion of the Constitution drafted in autumn 2005 turned out to be a sham. Whatever passed for the discussion lasted between November 15 and December 15. People were promised the sky, drawn into discussion of petty insignificant details... right until the moment when the whole project was quietly dropped.

I do not know whose bright idea it was to start discussing theory, namely differences between presidential, parliamentary, and presidential-parliamentary republics. There was nothing constructive about it. Debates like that are for Ivory Tower academicians, and yet the choice of one of these models was suggested for a referendum. On the other hand, somebody on the Kyrgyz political Olympus must have needed these distractions to prevent transformation of Kyrgyzstan into a parliamentary republic. (It was quite a popular idea once.)

Bakiyev signed a decree on preparations for the referendum on January 5, 2006. The document made it plain that the referendum was to be organized in late 2006. Some Kyrgyz politicians including lawmakers assumed that the president was merely stalling for time, unwilling to have so important a matter finally settled. These politicians began insisting on having a referendum on some specific text as opposed to one on abstract theoretizations. Lots of draft constitutions appeared in the country over a surprisingly short period. I tried to keep track but eventually decided that it was a waste of time because most draft documents were outrageously raw and unprofessional.

Bakiyev's shiftiness with regard to the constitutional reforms enraged his political enemies in the opposition. Like Japanese kamikaze, the opposition attacked. On November 8, 2006, the opposition literally bullied the Jogorku Kenesh into voting for the hastily-drawn draft Constitution. The document was so absurd as to merit a place in the Guinness Record Book. It took me some time then to come up with a term defining my opinion of this sort of documents. I eventually decided that "fleas of the Kyrgyz Constitution" pretty much said it all. Not because of these documents' size or significance despite what some Kyrgyz colleagues decided. Fleas are parasites that have to be extinguished. They appear whenever people stop taking care. The disdain for democracy and even common sense displayed by Kyrgyz politicians reminds me of a man who no longer cares about personal hygiene.

Kyrgyz opposition's exultation over the so called "November 8 triumph" did not last long. For starters, the authorities took their sweet time having the document officially published. When it finally was published, however, it was found to have been amended. Even that was not all. It took Bakiyev just over a month to engineer a "Bishkek Thermidor" and turn the tables. On December 30, the Jogorku Kenesh executed an unexpected U-turn and, contrary to its own past decisions, endorsed another draft Constitution.

All of that was done in utter defiance of the acting legislation. Kyrgyz politicians themselves made the constitutional zone a vast minefield. Someone capable of lighting the fuse was all that was needed, and Kyrgyzstan had its crop of trigger-happy "political demolition specialists". Lawmaker Karabekov got to "the fuse" with matches on August 27, 2007. His colleague Eshimkanov joined him on September 3.

These two purity-seekers appealed to the Constitutional Court complaining of the violations of the legislation in adoption of the constitutions dated November 8 and December 30, 2006. The Constitution of Kyrgyzstan (Article 96, Clause 3) plainly states that its amendment should be preceded by a ruling of the Constitutional Court. Certain procedures are supposed to be observed as well - just like in most countries of the world. The Kyrgyz Constitution, for one, insists that all suggestions concerning its amendment be discussed not earlier than three months after and not later than six months after they were forwarded to the parliament. Amendment of the Constitution is too serious a matter to permit any rush. Adopting the November 8 and December 30 constitutions, the parliament ignored these requirements.

On September 14, 2007, the Constitutional Court ruled to void the laws of the Kyrgyz Republic "On new Constitution of the Kyrgyz Republic" dated November 8, 2006, and December 30, 2006.

This decision essentially restored validity of Akayev's last Constitution, one adopted at a referendum on February 2, 2003. Bakiyev was not particularly upset by this turn of events. Probably because he had engineered it himself. Like a bona fide prestidigitator, Bakiyev conjured another draft Constitution and offered it for a referendum.

The Constitutional Court verdict was published in Kyrgyz media outlets (Slovo Kyrgyzstana, for example, published it on September 19), but the text of Bakiyev's draft Constitution remained mostly unknown to the population. It was only published in local newspapers with small print-runs and posted in the Internet.

Bakiyev's logic is clear. He bested the united opposition and its professional demagogues in the streets this spring. The united front of the opposition, the coalition, split. Some activists and leaders sided up with the regime (one was bought with premiership), others were frightened into passiveness (with criminal charges pressed against some of them). The majority, however, seemed to lose interest when the opposition suspended payment for their activeness and participation in protest actions. In any case, Bakiyev judged the time ripe to put second phase of his offensive in motion. He hopes now to rearrange the power structure to his own advantage and shuffle composition of the parliament where some political enemies of his still can be found.

All in all, Bakiyev's actions do not really differ from the actions of his predecessor Akayev. Akayev finagled referendums too. He was fond of putting the issues he needed for nationwide ballots. The interim between his decrees on referendums and the referendums themselves was usually brief. The population was never given a chance to ponder the matter. It was simply told to go to the polling station and vote aye for another momentous decision (whatever it was). It was so with the referendums that amended the Constitution on October 22, 1994, February 10, 1996, October 17, 1998, and February 2, 2003.

Referendum as an institution is thoroughly discredited in Kyrgyzstan. Ditto the practice of constitutional rule-making. I know that the Soviet era is not what is to be remembered with a nostalgic longing, but the impression is that even the Soviet regime would have balked at what lots of modern politicians never hesitate to pull off.

All right, forget the Soviet Union. There are, however, other examples. The Kyrgyz authorities like to draw parallels with Switzerland - similar mountains, similar democracy... Leaving mountains alone, let us consider the latter parallel.

Democratic procedures in Switzerland do not rest on gold bullion in Swiss banks. They rest on the prosaic electorate and that includes on the ratio between the population and purity of application of instruments of democracy.

The Swiss authorities use referendums to gauge the population's opinion. The Kyrgyz ones use referendums to rape this very opinion.

Given a chance to study and ponder Bakiyev's draft Constitution, the Kyrgyz population would have immediately found lots of inconsistencies and shortcomings in the document.

What parity of the branches of the government can we talk about when the president is supposed to choose the political party to entrust with formation of the government? It is naivete to believe that with over 100 (!) political parties operating in Kyrgyzstan, the authorities will abide by Article 69 (Clause 1) of the draft Constitution stating that the prime minister is nominated by the party that polled over 50% in the parliamentary election. Unless triumph of the presidential party is engineered in the election which is no problem, of course.

The president and only the president is supposed to be able to sack the Cabinet, prime minister, and ministers (Article 46, Clause 1, Subclauses 2 and 3). What does it have to do with expansion of the powers of the parliament the authorities have been promising these last two years?

Article 46 (Clause 2, Subclause 6) specifies that the president is to appoint 50% of the Central Electoral Commission staff. The president alone is supposed to wield the power to order a referendum (Article 46, Clause 6, Subclause 2). The parliament will find it extremely difficult to overcome presidential vetoes (Article 66, Clause 3). Is is what Bakiyev calls parity of the executive and legislative branches of the government?

The outcome of the referendum is clearly a foregone conclusion. Kyrgyzstan is not the USSR or Switzerland. It is a land of wonders. The powers-that-be arrange these wonders with the ease with which one orders a slice of pizza in an Italian restaurant.

The author: Ajdar Kurtov, an analyst with the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies