The 2021 election campaign of President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev has been remembered not only for a series of trips to the regions in October this year. He made grand promises during meetings with voters that the region would receive tens of trillions of soums under development and investment projects.
The quite logical questions arise: why is that Mirziyoyev and his team decided to give impressive sums to the regions in October – because of the elections? Where will the leader of the Republic get an additional hundred trillion soums? Did such promises help win a landslide victory in the elections? The editors of CentralAsia.news asked a political expert Bakhrom Khamroev to answer these questions.
Insignificant competitors
The interlocutor emphasised that Mirziyoyev’s statements about future financial injections into the regions do not look ridiculous next to what his rivals said. Khamroev stressed that the rest of the presidential candidates could hardly be called real rivals of the incumbent President of Uzbekistan.
“In fact, all Mirziyoyev’s “rivals” in the elections are the controlled, colourless persons whose role is to imitate participation in the electoral process, not a real struggle for power. An illustrative example is the behaviour of the leader of the Milli Tyklanysh party Alisher Kadyrov, who participated in the elections. He said that if he became president, he would introduce a compulsory income tax for labour migrants,” Khamroev said.
The expert believes that such a statement undermined the candidate’s rating, given that millions of citizens of the Republic are working in other countries and send hundreds of millions of dollars to their relatives in Uzbekistan every year. In his opinion, it is unlikely that a participant in the presidential race independently decided to declare a deliberately unpopular initiative.
Promises from the “master”
The interlocutor once again spotlighted a serious blunder in Uzbekistan’s economic policy. He stated that the national debt of Uzbekistan was growing, and budgetary holes were being “plugged” with borrowed funds.
Khamroev noted that credit funds gave the appearance of an improvement in the socio-economic situation of the population, and the media played a key role in this process. The formation and maintenance of a positive image of the head of state does not stop, the political scientist noted.
“Mirziyoyev not only shines with his political authority, but also makes grand promises, moreover, as a master. Recently, a promise had been made to invest 70 trillion soums to develop Tashkent and Tashkent region, the expert noted.
Bakhrom Khamroev emphasised that the capital and Tashkent region were promised the bulk of the money in the election promises. The interlocutor believes that Mirziyoyev is deliberately strengthening the “Centre”, thus ensuring the stability of the regime and support.
“Taking into account the above, the presidential election promises need to be evaluated. Promises will surely be kept to the extent that they contribute to strengthening the regime. For example, you can be sure that cash injections in Tashkent and the region will be made in the planned volume,” Khamroev said.
However, the fight against corruption and political and economic reforms will hardly go beyond the pre-election promises, as will the solution of the poverty and unemployment problems. Khamroev allowed that these problems “do not challenge” the current regime, and moreover, labour migration still let avoid strong discontent due to low incomes of the population.
The interlocutor expressed belief that the fight against corruption in the republic had become less serious after the “cleansing” from the people of the regime of Islam Karimov.
Radical changes in the economy and politics should not be expected, Khamroev said. He believes that Mirziyoyev’s team doesn’t need any significant steps in this direction, because the “top”, in principle, is satisfied with the level of control over the state.
