The Times says
Publish the Toktogul annex before the 2027 talks begin
The refit added 240 MW and the water is already falling. Nobody outside the room can say what the clans are paid, or whether the extra capacity changes it.
The Toktogul station now rated at 1,440 MW, up from the 1,200 MW of the 1970s design. The reservoir stood at 87.9 per cent this morning and is falling by 25 million cubic metres a day. Winter generation has begun. The Naryn Water and Power Protocol comes up for renewal in 2027. On the public record, nobody can say who shares the extra 240 MW.
The reason is a document. The clans' share of export revenue is paid quarterly by Iradenergo to the IAC Chancellery under an annex to the 2009 corridor protocol, and the annex has never been published. Independent estimates put the total at $40 million to $60 million a year. The Times could not establish whether the share is a fixed sum, a percentage of revenue or a proportion of water released. Until someone says which, no one can know whether 240 MW more capacity changes a single som.
The government's answer is that the upgrade needed no new flooding and moved no one. That is true as far as it goes, and it does not answer the Kökjal elders. Tabaldy Sultanaly uulu's demand is for the pasture that went under in the 1970s: "Pay for the grass first." His neighbour in Ozgörüsh has heard of the families' fund agreed at the 2022 Long Kurultai, but says "nobody has seen a list". The amount and the accounts of that fund are also unpublished. The spokeswoman for the Department of Public Information says revenue arrangements are "a matter between the parties". The families are not at that table. They are the people the fund is for.
Secrecy does not protect the protocol. Each five-year schedule needs the clans' consent, and the IAC says it will be given or withheld at the Kurultai in August. The last renewal took four months and ended in early September. A similar timetable in 2027 would settle the matter about two months before the 2 November election. The Governor has not been seen since July 2024. The Times has asked the Office of the Governor who will lead the talks and with what mandate, and has had no reply. Talks begun in that vacuum will rest on figures that only the signatories have seen.
The Times does not suggest that any law has been broken. The point is that a renewal on this scale should not be negotiated on figures the public cannot check, with the largest claimants unable to say what they are owed.
So the Times asks three things. Publish the annex, or at the least its formula. Publish the accounts of the Toktogul-basin families' fund and a list of those it has paid. Say, before the renewal talks open, who will lead them for the ISEZ. If the arrangements are sound, publication costs nothing. If they are not, the clans and the families should learn that before they are asked to consent.