Politics of Kyrgyzstan - Legislative Branch

Legislative Branch

In the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan had a unicameral legislature which was replaced in 1995 by the bicameral Supreme Council (Joghorku Keneš). The Supreme Council consisted of the Assembly of People's Representatives (45 seats; members were elected by popular vote from single member constituencies) and the Legislative Assembly (60 seats; 45 members of which were elected by popular vote from single member constituencies, and 15 of which were from national party lists on a proportional basis with a 5% threshold). All legislative terms were five years.

In 2005, as part of the 2005 election process and in accordance with a 2003 referendum, the Parliament again became unicameral. The Legislative Assembly' (Myizam Chygaruu Jyiyny) had 75 members, elected for five-year terms from single-seat constituencies.

However, because of the political unrest, a new constitutional referendum was held on 21 October 2007 which approved a new electoral system, enlarged the parliament to 90 members and introducing party-list voting. Party-list voting is a proportional representation system of voting, where candidates are selected from central party lists rather than locally elected. Early parliamentary elections were held on 16 December 2007.