Sitqi fakulteti Odinayeva Barno Ingiliz tili fanidan tayyorlagan Mustaqil ish Qarshi – 2023 Famous Person Plan: Access The main part

2. Political life
From 1966 to 1986, he worked his way up the ranks in the Uzbek State Planning Committee, from chief specialist, to department head, to Minister of Finance of the Uzbek SSR, chairman of the State Planning Committee and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Uzbek SSR.
Karimov with Dr. Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, August 1991
In 1986, Karimov assumed the post of first secretary of the Kashkadarya Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan Committee of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR. In 1989, he became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR, after his predecessor Rafiq Nishonov failed to quell inter-ethnic clashes and instability in the Fergana Region.[10] From 1990 to 1991, he served as a member of the Central Committee and Politburo. On 24 March 1990, he was elected the first President of the Republic by the Uzbek Supreme Soviet.
On 31 August 1991, 10 days after the attempted coup in Moscow, Karimov declared Uzbekistan to be an independent republic, the second of the Central Asian republics to do so (after neighboring Kyrgyzstan); 1 September was declared Uzbekistan's Independence Day. The Uzbek Communist Party (UCP) changed its name to the People's Democratic Party of Uzbekistan (PDP). In the December 1991 presidential election, 86 percent of the public cast their votes for Karimov and 12.3 percent for his rival Muhammad Salih, chairman of the Erk (Freedom) Party.
Uzbekistan under the Karimov government was classified as a hard authoritarian state. The state's primary legitimacy claims are anti-Islamism and ethnic identity. Karimov's primary authoritarian measures that were implemented following the brief period of "thaw" and political tolerance include the thwarting of alternative political leaders from coalition building.
In 1992, he accomplished the hajj. In 1995, a few months before Karimov's term was due to expire, his term was extended until 2000 through a referendum. Results showed 99.6 percent of voters favoured extending Karimov's term. The United States criticised the referendum for its "lack of public debate," and noted several instances where one person cast the votes of an entire family. Following the referendum, in 1996, restrictions on opposition were further tightened through the Law on Political Parties. This law ensured the right to meetings, publications and elections of opposition parties, but only to those who had registered with the Ministry of Justice. This policy allowed for government blockage of unapproved parties. Political parties based on ethnic, religious, military or subversive ideas were prohibited.

President Islam Karimov with voters in Tashkent, 1999

At the time, Karimov publicly stated that he considered the referendum to be a re-election to a second term, which under the Constitution would have required him to leave office in 2000. However, the legislature passed a resolution opposing the decision, leading Karimov to announce he would run for reelection in 2000.^[18] In the election held at 9 January, he was reelected with 91.9% of the vote. The United States said that this election "was neither free nor fair and offered Uzbekistan's voters no true choice".^[19] The sole opposition candidate, Abdulhafiz Jalalov, implicitly admitted that he entered the race only to make it seem democratic and publicly stated that he voted for Karimov. According to dissident writer Alisher Ilkhamov from the Open Society Foundations, 99.6% had elected to keep Karimov in office after his term had expired, but ballots had been created such that it was much easier for voters to cast a "yes" vote than a "no" vote. Unmarked ballots, as well as ballots of those who did not vote, were automatically counted as "yes" votes, while a full black mark, under the supervision of authorities, was necessary to count as a "no" vote. Karimov took fewer foreign visits, especially to the West, in comparison to his Kazakh counterpart. There were few foreign embassies in Tashkent as of 2016, with only 44 in all: 29 from countries not part of the former Soviet Union and seven from the West.

Under the Karimov government, a heavy regulation policy of NGOs led to the creation of paradoxically named GONGOs, or Government-Organised Non-Governmental Organisations. Trade unions became "an instrument of management rather than a means of interest group-based collective bargaining". The Karimov government required universities to serve a strictly pedagogical purpose and not as a branch of civil society; they had to provide students with skills for the workplace without an emphasis on the skill of critique of public issues.