Kyrgyzstan has had an eventful past thirteen months. Parliamentary elections on October 4, 2020, resulted in the victory of a collection of oligarchic and pro-government parties, provoking accusations of fraud and vote-buying. In the days after the ballot, protesters gathered in Bishkek, the country’s capital, and the situation soon spun out of control for the government. Demonstrators stormed the legislature, the presidential office, and several other state institutions, and freed several imprisoned politicians from detention.

As the days went on, protesters began forming groups coalescing behind various opposition figures bidding for power. Two competing factions of parliament held ad hoc sessions where each “appointed” its own prime minister. The one who emerged victorious was Sadyr Japarov, one of the politicians who had been freed from prison just days earlier. Japarov, who had been serving a sentence for supposedly kidnapping a regional governor during protests against a gold mine in 2013, was formally elected prime minister on October 14, 2020, and just a day later assumed the role of acting president when incumbent Sooronbay Jeenbekov resigned.

Japarov has dominated Kyrgyz politics for the past year now, winning a presidential election in January without any serious competition, and passing through referendum a new constitution that limits the power of parliament and puts more control in the hands of the president. His sudden consolidation of power and “populist” style have drawn comparisons — from commentators in domestic left and liberal circles and international liberal media outlets — to various right-wing authoritarian world leaders, expressing concerns that he could move the country from a bourgeois electoral democracy to the authoritarian strongman system seen in Kyrgyzstan’s post-Soviet Central Asian neighbors.