Do we like them?

Do we like Sadyr Japarov?

Our score: 1 out of 10. He signed a law treating LGBTQ+ information as harmful to children and has presided over a press crackdown, with little verified good to set against it.

Japarov's rise is one of the stranger stories in modern politics. In October 2020 he was serving a prison sentence tied to a 2013 rally in Karakol when protesters swept through Bishkek during unrest and freed him. Within days he was acting prime minister, then acting president, and in January 2021 he won a snap election with about 79 per cent of the vote.

Since then the story has been about holding onto power. Japarov and his security chief Tashiyev ran the country as a tandem, until February 2026 when he dismissed Tashiyev. Reports say the parliament speaker quit soon after, that people who called for early elections were arrested, and that Tashiyev later faced charges over an alleged coup plot. Tashiyev's supporters and neutral analysts call it a purge, and the government calls it protecting unity.

On the harm test, the clearest mark is the law he signed on 14 August 2023. It adds penalties for spreading information that supposedly harms children, and it lists promoting non-traditional sexual relations among the harms. Rights groups say it copies Russia's approach and puts LGBTQ+ people and the people who support them at risk. The government's line is that it protects children, but we can't call that a pass.

The press is the other big worry. A court has shut down the investigative outlet Kloop, and staff from Temirov Live were arrested in 2024 in what press-freedom groups call an unprecedented crackdown. Japarov has defended the moves, and critics say they are meant to silence reporting on the government. Al Jazeera's report on the crackdown lays out the detail.

The vote itself is also in question. In the November 2025 snap parliamentary election, Al Jazeera reported a vote with no real opposition, and Japarov's allies swept the result. Election observers have said the campaign environment was restrictive. Foreign Policy has argued the country is sliding towards illiberalism under him and Tashiyev.

The good stuff is hard to pin down from the pages we could reach. Our searches turned up welfare and pension measures and a prisoner pardon in 2020, but we couldn't open the original reports, so we won't lean on them. He has also pushed regional hydropower and renewable energy. That's the honest list, and it's thin next to the harm.