Gov’t not going to revise the law “On State Language”

In the decision signed by the Chairman of the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis - Speaker Nurdinjon Ismailov (April 12, 2022 No. 2027-IV):

“1. The Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan “On Amendments and Additions to the Law of the Republic of Uzbekistan "On the State Language of the Republic of Uzbekistan” shall be removed from further consideration by the Legislative Chamber of Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

2. This Decision should be sent to the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Senate of Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan for information .

Many intellectuals, devotees of the Uzbek language, it is an open question that the law “On the State Language”, which was adopted on October 21, 1989, when Uzbekistan was still under the Soviet rule, and which was later amended, was handled very loosely. 

The imperfection of the law can be clearly seen by looking at the text of such laws of neighboring countries.

For example, the law on the state language in Uzbekistan consists of 5 thousand 187 characters, in Kazakhstan 15 thousand 13 characters, in Azerbaijan 12 thousand, in Turkmenistan 15 thousand 468, in Kyrgyzstan 14 thousand 63, in Tajikistan 8 thousand 600, the law on the state language of the Russian Federation consists of 10 thousand 158 characters . It turns out that the “smallest” law in Central Asia belongs to the largest country in this region.

Also, Article 1 of the law stipulates that the state language of the Republic of Uzbekistan is Uzbek.

However, in the words of the literary critic Zuhriddin Isomiddinov, an “apology” is asked for this “sloppy” statement in the next article:

“Article 2. Granting the status of the state language to the Uzbek language does not interfere with the constitutional rights of the nationalities and peoples living in the territory of the republic to use their mother tongue.

Such “softness” and imperfections in the law continued in other articles as well.

Based on this, the draft of the new version of the Law “On the State Language”, which the Department of State Language Development and many intellectuals worked on, was submitted to the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis on May 15, 2020 on behalf of the Cabinet of Ministers .

However, during the review of the draft law, some deputies, who did not understand its historical significance, opposed a number of articles of the draft, and these norms were removed from the draft.

On May 24, 2021, the legislative chamber of the Oliy Majlis finally adopted the law “On Amendments and Additions to the Law on the State Language of the Republic of Uzbekistan”, although it was somewhat blunt.

A month later, on June 26, the law was discussed and approved at the sixteenth plenary session of the Senate .

It seemed that everything was going smoothly in the process and that the law should come into force soon. But almost a year later, the future fate of the law and its whereabouts remained unclear.

At the press conference held at AIMC on November 19, 2021, in response to the question posed by a Kun.uz correspondent about the future fate of this law, the senators said that the law had not yet reached the Senate. However, the law has already been approved by the Senate.

As can be seen from the decision of the meeting of the Legislative Chamber, the law approved by the Senate and sent to the President for signature was returned by the President to the Legislative Chamber on March 25, 2022.

The decision of the Legislative Chamber on April 12 stated that the new version of the Law “On State Language” will be removed from consideration by the Legislative Chamber of Oliy Majlis from now on. 

So what do the words “henceforth remove from consideration” in the decision mean?

For example, if the President sent back the law because of its shortcomings, why did deputies not discuss those shortcomings again? What is the future of the law?

Kun.uz reporter contacted Odil Tojiyev, Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Chamber for cooperation with mass media, to get answers to such questions.

But Tojiyev limited his comment to simply saying, “Look at our website and pages on social networks”. However, the Legislature did not provide any information about this to the public.

Another deputy of the Legislative Chamber, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, explained the non-acceptance of the law by its highly political issue and the fear that remains in the political consciousness in this regard.

“Yes, when deputies return a law to the chamber, they can send it back to the initiator of the law or revise it after correcting its shortcomings. But the leadership preferred to simply send it back to the Cabinet. 

On that day, not a single deputy was even given the opportunity to speak on this issue, and discussions on the law were closed with 100% votes,” the source said.

The deputy added that “removal from consideration” in the legislation means that the law can be re-introduced after at least 6 months, if necessary.

Therefore, if necessary, the law currently in the Cabinet of Ministers (which has lost the importance of being called a law) can be discussed again after another 6 months.