Three opposition parties in Kyrgyzstan reached an agreement on August 6 to merge and propose a single candidate for the country’s October 15 presidential election, representatives of the parties announced on August 7.

The merger might allow the opposition to garner enough votes to stand a chance against the presidential candidate of the popular Social Democratic Party (SDP), which currently controls a majority in parliament. Kyrgyzstan’s current president Almazbek Atambayev is also an SDP member.

The three parties are Onuguu-Progress, Mekenim-Kyrgyzstan and Ata-Jurt. Each has already filed for a candidacy - a candidate from one party will represent all three in the election. The parties have not yet announced a name for the newly formed party.

Missing among the major opposition factions is the Ata-Meken party, which saw its leader Omurbek Tekebayev detained and sent to trial in June.

Tekebayev’s arrest along with the arrests of other opposition figures does not bode well for the Central Asian country. President Atambayev’s constitutional fiddle has raised suspicions he might be planning to stay in power beyond his six-year term. While he has repeatedly stated his intention to pursue no further political office, his critics suspect he hopes to appoint his own loyal prime minister and possibly manipulate the election in favour of his own chosen presidential candidate.

The two previous Kyrgyz presidential regimes, excluding Roza Otunbayeva’s interim government in 2010, have collapsed via revolutions.

The arrests raise further concerns that Kyrgyzstan is moving away from the democratic path set out following the two revolutions and may face another violent regime change, potentially cementing the country as a failed state, according to some analysts.