Central Election Commission of Kyrgyzstan: 80 percent of referendum participants supported changes to the Constitution • Meduza • RIMA

Central Election Commission of Kyrgyzstan: 80 percent of referendum participants supported changes to the Constitution

The Central Election Commission of Kyrgyzstan said that almost 80 percent of voters in a referendum on constitutional reform were in favor of amending the country's fundamental law. Voting took place on December 11th.

“The CEC recognizes the referendum as valid if more than 30 percent of voters took part in it, and it is obvious that the voting results indicate that the amendments to the Constitution can be considered adopted,” Interfax quotes the head of the commission, Nurzhan Shaildabekova.

According to preliminary data published on the commission's website, 79.7 percent of voters were in favor of the reform, 15.4 percent were against. The turnout was about 42 percent.

The published data comes from "auto-reading boxes". “These are preliminary data, the final results will be after the manual counting of ballots,” the commission said.

The constitution of Kyrgyzstan was adopted in 1993 and has been changed several times since then. Many of the amendments were aimed at strengthening presidential power, which was one of the reasons for the coups that took place in Kyrgyzstan in the 2000s. In 2010, the current Constitution was adopted, which actually transformed Kyrgyzstan from a presidential to a parliamentary-presidential republic, limiting the powers of the head of state.
The draft amendments, for which the citizens of Kyrgyzstan voted on December 11, envisage the introduction of a total of 36 amendments. The changes expand the powers of the prime minister, including in the field of appointing members of the government and heads of regional administrations.
It is also proposed to make a clarification to the Constitution that a family can be created “on the basis of a voluntary union of a man and a woman” (in the current version, there is no mention of gender). The reform also provides for the abolition of the priority of international human rights treaties over other international treaties.