Editing Politics of Kyrgyzstan (section)

==Legislative branch==
{{main|Supreme Council (Kyrgyzstan)}}
In the Soviet era, Kyrgyzstan had a unicameral legislature which was replaced in 1995 by the [[bicameralism|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 [[constituency|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).<ref name="Day">Day, Alan John (2002) ''Political Parties of the World'' (5th ed.) John Harper, London, p. 289, {{ISBN|0-9536278-7-X}}</ref> All legislative terms were five years.<ref name="Day"/>

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.<ref>Finn, Peter (28 February 2005) "Elections in Kyrgyzstan Inconclusive: Most Legislative Races Forced into Runoffs: Monitors Fault Atmosphere" ''The Washington Post'' p. A-10</ref>

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.<ref name="BBCStaff">{{Cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7058557.stm |title=Staff (23 October 2007) "'Many violations' in Kyrgyz vote" ''BBC News'' |date=23 October 2007 |access-date=18 January 2008 |archive-date=8 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170108192629/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7058557.stm |url-status=live }}</ref> Party-list voting is a proportional representation system of voting, where candidates are selected from central party lists rather than locally elected. [[Kyrgyzstani parliamentary election, 2007|Early parliamentary elections]] were held on 16 December 2007.<ref>''Kyrgyz News Agency'' (15 November 2007) "Three Kyrgyz parties withdraw bids to run for parliament" from ''BBC Monitoring: Central Asia Unit''</ref><ref>''Kyrgyz AKIpress'' (25 December 2007) "OSCE envoy condemns Kyrgyz crackdown on opposition" from ''BBC Monitoring: Central Asia Unit''</ref>