The Kyrgyzstan News Agency is reporting that President Almazbek Atambayev has vetoed a bill.

There are very few details, but the bill seems to have created a 7 per cent threshold for party representation on local councils. The logic seems to be that at the local level parties are not well organised and that representation is usually local and/or personal. So, the bill would seem to be designed to help increase party institutionalisation, but it has now been vetoed.

The constitution states that a presidential veto can be overridden by a two-thirds majority in the legislature.

President Atambayev is from the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan (SDPK). The government is a four-party coalition comprising the SDPK, Respublika, Ar-Namys and Ata-Meken. The Ata-Zhurt party is the only opposition faction.