Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Dec. 7
By Demir Azizov - Trend:
Uzbekistan's main objective is the decisive advance in the development, democratic renewal and modernization of the country, Uzbek President Islam Karimov said at the ceremony dedicated to the 22nd anniversary of the country's constitution.
The president stressed that this day will remain in the history of Uzbekistan as a holiday. It laid the foundation of an independent democratic state with a socially oriented market economy and the civil society. The main objective is to ensure the interests, rights and freedom of people, the rule of law equal for all citizens.
President Karimov said that Uzbekistan refused from various forms of the so-called shock therapy, by adopting its own "Uzbek model" of transition from a totalitarian system with a dominant single ideology to the creation of a new democratic state. This had a special significance.
The president recalled that during the years of independence, Uzbekistan's economy increased by almost five times. The income increased by 8.7 times per capita. The population of the country during this period increased by 1.5 times - up to 31.5 million people. The country's external debt does not exceed 15 percent. The domestic debt is zero. The export volumes and foreign exchange reserves are steadily increasing.
"While speaking about the tremendous changes in our country, the modernization of our towns and villages, welfare growth, we must say about the extremely important and crucial sources of these changes," the president said. "The significant changes in consciousness and thinking of our people, their beliefs, attitude towards the country's future, qualitative growth of their political and legal culture are among these sources."
The Concept of Further Deepening the Democratic Reforms and Establishing the Civil Society in the country designed for a long period was adopted in 2010. Around 27 laws and dozens of legal acts were adopted to implement the programs envisaged by the concept.
The huge legislative work was conducted to intensify the democratic reforms, based on the constitutional principle of separation of powers. The powers were optimized among the main entities of state power - the president, the parliament, the government and the judiciary.
The role and importance of the Oliy Majlis increased in the state power system. The positions of the country's supreme legislative body strengthened in the formation and implementation of the internal and foreign policy. The principles, formation and activity of the Cabinet of Ministers, the executive bodies changed.
The parliamentary and public control embodied in the Constitution is of great importance in the democratic modernization of power.
The increasing maturity of the political parties, the political and legal culture level of citizens was the decisive condition for the implementation of the constitutional reforms.
Several measures were taken to strengthen the judicial control over the procedural rights of citizens in the stage of inquiry and investigation. The measures were important to improve the structure, organizational framework for the activity of general jurisdiction courts and to strengthen their human resource capacity.
The changes in the information reforms contributed to ensure the freedom, the rights of citizens to receive, disseminate information and to strengthen the media independence.
The profound democratic reforms were carried out in the area of formation and development of the electoral system.
The particular attention was paid to the field of democratization and liberalization of the economy, the creation of effective mechanisms to support small business and private entrepreneurship.
But all we have done is just the beginning on the way of being among the developed democratic countries, providing people with a decent standard of living, achieving the high prestige in the international community.
"If we want to achieve the goals, we can not be satisfied with the achieved level," the president said. "We must constantly search and achieve progress."
The Constitution Day is celebrated in Uzbekistan on December 8.