 The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan accused Mamatov of criticizing the Chairman of the Party, Islam Karimov.The chief justice of the Supreme Court, on his own TV program, asked the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet for permission to arrest Mamatov, but the attempt was rejected for lack of parliamentary support.On August 17, 1991, to protest the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt in Moscow opposing Mikhail Gorbachev's reform program and the new union treaty for decentralizing Soviet power and returning it to the republics, Mamatov joined some of his colleagues in a demonstration in front of the Parliament building and publicly burned his Communist Party membership certificate.