The Mayor of Osh City has expressed the intention to create his own municipal police, including a special task force. While some consider the initiative an attempt to strengthen his position in a long-lasting confrontation with the central government, others contend that it is a game of politics in light of the upcoming local elections.  

The Mayor’s Office of Osh, the country’s second largest city, plans to create a municipal police, independent from the Ministry of Interior and accountable to the city authorities. The plan was announced by Mayor Melis Myrzakmatov at a meeting with mass media representatives on November 10, 2011. According to the mayor, the municipal police will include “neighborhood police inspectors, children’s officers and a special task force.” He claimed that police and other law enforcement bodies fulfill political tasks, not legal ones, hence the need to form a local police body.

Myrzakmatov’s plan received immediate feedback from the authorities in Bishkek. Shamshybek Mamyrov, head of the Research Center under the Interior Ministry, stated that the Osh mayor’s initiative is illegal, adding that such statements might undermine the currently stable situation in the southern region. Moreover, the initiative invoked considerable public discussion, mostly critical of the mayor’s intentions which are widely considered as attempts to undermine Kyrgyz statehood and state institutions and to create an autonomous “city-state” on Kyrgyzstan’s territory.

The day after the “ill-fated” announcement, Myrzakmatov organized a press conference and denied his statement, stating that the media had interpreted his announcement incorrectly. “First of all, we have to understand that the law applies to the entire territory of the country and we cannot say that there will be an independent ‘autonomous’ police in a separate city,” he stated. The controversial mayor added that it was just an idea, which his office is planning to suggest within the framework of reforms of the Interior Ministry.

Experts claim that Myrzakmatov’s initiative is another open challenge to the central government in his continual confrontation with Bishkek since last year’s overthrow of the government, which was followed by violent ethnic conflict in the south of the country starting in Osh.

Other analysts relate the demarche of the powerful local mayor to the upcoming local elections for the Osh city council, which is scheduled for February 2012. According to the law, the elected city council will elect a new mayor. Political expert Nurjigit Kadyrbekov considers Myrzakmatov’s statement as an attempt to reaffirm his intention to remain on his post and to warn the “unfriendly” authorities in Bishkek to renounce the idea of getting rid of him.

After the fall of the Bakiev’s regime, Myrzakmatov, who was considered a close ally of the ousted president, fell into disfavor with the newly established interim government. However, his popularity among the Kyrgyz ethnic majority during the interethnic clashes in the south, where he was perceived as “a protector of the Kyrgyz people” due to his nationalistic rhetoric and open capitalization of national sentiments, became a serious challenge to the Bishkek authorities in their attempts to remove him.

In August 2010, when the Osh mayor refused to allow the deployment of an OSCE police mission in the southern capital against Bishkek’s will, the interim government tried to remove Myrzakmatov. However, the attempt failed as the mayor’s supporters organized mass protests demanding a stop to the persecution of their “protector.” The country’s interim leaders were forced to leave him on his post to avoid worsening the already fragile situation in southern Kyrgyzstan after the recent ethnic violence. In addition, the interim government itself was at that point too weak to extend its power across the country, especially in the south.

Since then, Myrzakmatov has continuously ignored the central government by exerting full power in his “territory” and often opposing decisions coming from the capital city. Bishkek’s policy of keeping silent in response to the mayor’s provocative actions and statements contributed to strengthening the de facto autonomous rule exercised by the scandalous mayor in his city.

Meanwhile, local experts discuss the fate of the controversial mayor in connection with the president-elect Almazbek Atambaev’s ascent to power followed by the expected changes in government and the composition of the parliamentary majority coalition. At the same time, most experts agree that Atambaev and the new government will have to deal with the “local problem” if Bishkek intends to reassert its power across the country.