On August 1, at 00:00, the national discussion of the draft law on amending the Constitution of Uzbekistan came to an end. It has been going on since June 25.
Initially, 10 days were given for discussions. Later, deputies admitted that the period was short and added another 10 days. During this, legislators decided to extend the discussion time for another 15 days.
According to the press service of the Constitutional Commission, the responsible committees of the Legislative Chamber will “continue their work on summarizing, analyzing proposals received from citizens and improving the draft law”.
It is not yet known how open this process will be. Despite the fact that the Commission constantly emphasizes that “the source of changes is the people”, a number of changes made to the initial draft of the Basic Law came as a surprise to the people of Uzbekistan. Not only the draft law, but also the decision to extend the period of public discussion was unanimously approved by deputies.
The project was developed by the Constitutional Commission within a month. The head of the commission, Akmal Saidov, emphasized that “it is possible to talk about the unique experience of Uzbekistan in carrying out constitutional reforms” and called it “Uzbek know-how”.
According to the Constitutional Commission, as of July 30, more than 117,300 proposals were received from citizens and organizations (more than 62,000 of them were received before the project was announced). Most of them - more than 77.6 thousand were received by phone. 24,300 proposals came through the “Bu mening Konstitutsiyam” (“This is my Constitution”) website. 14,500 proposals were delivered by citizens personally. The number of collective appeals is around 860.
It is not possible to get acquainted with the proposals of citizens - after June 25, there was no announcement on the website about accepting proposals.
