Kyrgyz Elections - March/April 2005

Revolution in Kyrgyz Republic

Jews Face A Revolution
April 11:	AFP
April 5:	Washington Post
March 30:	New York Times
March 25:	Washington Post New York Times
March 24:	CNN
March 23:	Washington Post
March 21:	Washington Post
March 14:	AP/Washington Post New York Times

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Agence France-Presse- 04.11.2005

Kyrgyzstan sets July 10 for presidential election

(AFP) - Kyrgyzstan's parliament ended days of uncertainty by accepting ousted president Askar Akayev's resignation and setting July 10 as the date for presidential elections.

The Central Asian country's parliament approved Akayev's resignation by 48 votes to five and then set a fresh date for polls that had earlier been scheduled for late June.

The setting of an election date later than that previously planned was designed to create a more level playing field for potential candidates, parliament speaker Omurbek Tekebayev said.

"We changed the election date so that all candidates have time to prepare -- not only Bakiyev, who is currently using all resources of the administration," Tekebayev told journalists, referring to the country's new prime minister and acting president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

Akayev fled this former Soviet republic that he had led since 1990 on March 24 when weeks of unrest over a disputed parliamentary poll boiled over and opposition protestors overran the main seat of government in the capital Bishkek.

On Friday parliament stripped Akayev of many privileges that he would previously have been due and stripped his relatives of immunity from prosecution that they had previously been granted.

Elsewhere in the capital Bishkek on Monday the supreme court resolved another major element of uncertainty hanging over the country, annulling a criminal conviction against Felix Kulov, a leading politician seen as a likely election rival to Bakiyev.

Kulov, a popular former head of national security and Bishkek mayor, was jailed for seven years in 2000 on corruption charges widely seen as politically driven.

He was freed from jail immediately after Akayev's ouster and was entrusted by Bakiyev with the task of restoring law and order amid a massive wave of looting that hit the capital.

Kulov reacted with satisfaction to Monday's supreme court decision annulling the last of two criminal convictions against him, but remained coy about his intentions.

"Finally the court has been able to objectively and fairly consider my two criminal cases -- it shows that democratic changes have indeed occurred," Kulov said.

"I have not yet made a final decision whether or not to run for the presidency as it is too heavy a responsibility -- I will now closely work with my party Ar-Namys (Dignity) and prepare for the party's congress," Kulov told journalists.

Monday's key decisions will come as a relief after Western diplomats and Kyrgyz politicians had warned that the situation appeared to again be spinning out of control in this mountain republic on China's western edge.

In recent days thousands of impoverished country dwellers have taken to seizing land around the capital, while supporters of a disaffected election candidate have taken over a regional governor's headquarters and threatened to march on Bishkek.

The instability continued over the weekend with the shooting dead on Sunday night of a leading figure in Bakiyev's People's Movement, Usen Kudaibergenov, who was killed in his home by unknown assailants.

He had been a leading figure in the "people's militia" tasked with restoring order after Akayev's ouster and had demonstrated against those seizing land around Bishkek's periphery in recent days, Kyrgyz media said.

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Washington Post - 04.04.2005

Washington Post

Kyrgyz President To Resign Interim Leaders, Akayev Set Deal 


By Henry Meyer, Associated Press

MOSCOW -- Askar Akayev, the Kyrgyz president who fled his country last month after demonstrators stormed his offices, said he will resign on Monday.

Akayev met for three hours Sunday with a delegation representing Kyrgyzstan's interim leadership and later told reporters that a protocol for his resignation had been completed, and he would sign it Monday.

The delegation was led by Omurbek Tekebayev, the speaker of the Kyrgyz parliament who is one of Akayev's most prominent opponents.

Both Tekebayev and Akayev emphasized that the agreement would be a significant step toward restoring stability in Kyrgyzstan, which has been on edge since opposition supporters stormed the presidential building in the capital, Bishkek, on March 24. The protesters were angry about a parliamentary election they said was rigged.

A former opposition leader, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, is now the acting president.

"We have approved a very good and historic document," said Akayev, 60, who led the Central Asian country for 16 years. It will "pave the way for finding a way out of the political crisis that Kyrgyzstan has found itself in."

Full details of the resignation agreement were not immediately available, but Akayev said Russia and Kazakhstan were listed as guarantors. Akayev reportedly used neighboring Kazakhstan as a refuge after leaving Kyrgyzstan and before coming to Russia.

Likely at issue in the talks were assurances that Kyrgyzstan would not repeal the law under which Akayev, as president, was granted immunity from prosecution. Akayev and his family are widely believed in Kyrgyzstan to have been corrupt.

Akayev's resignation would remove the last apparent roadblock to the presidential elections that the interim government has called for June 26. If he had insisted on remaining president, the legitimacy of those elections could have been questioned at home and abroad.

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Washington Post - 03.25.2005

Washington Post

Kyrgyz Opposition Names President; Akayev Defiant

By Michael Steen

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan's opposition, a day after snatching power in a lightning coup, Friday named a new acting president while the ousted leader broke public silence to denounce them as "adventurers and conspirators."

The capital remained tense as darkness fell and occasional volleys of gunfire could be heard. Large plumes of smoke could be seen in the vicinity of a shopping center.

The government of President Askar Akayev, who has fled the country, fell Thursday after thousands of protesters stormed the main administration building in Bishkek, sparking an orgy of looting in the Central Asian city.

Opposition leader Kurmanbek Bakiev, who played a central role in the protests, said he had been named acting president while another opposition figure said presidential elections would be held in June.

The opposition claimed an early success by securing vital support from Russia, though the rest of the world held back.

Akayev, 59, railed at the opposition leaders from an undisclosed location outside the country, telling his people he was still their legitimate president and that his absence abroad was only temporary.

"A bunch of irresponsible adventurers and conspirators has taken the path of seizing power with force," he said in a statement sent by email to Kyrgyz news agency Kabar and posted on its Web site (www.kabar.kg).

He said he had not resigned and planned to return to Kyrgyzstan at some stage. He urged those who had supported the "anti-constitutional coup" to restore the constitutional order.

The scale of the looting that followed the seizure of government and presidential headquarters Thursday shook the opposition leaders themselves.

"God forbid anybody would have to have such a revolution," Felix Kulov, freed from jail by supporters and appointed acting interior minister, told state television. "It was a rampage of looting, just like in Iraq."

At least one man was shot dead during the looting overnight and 31 police officers were wounded, some seriously, he said. Gunfire resounded throughout the night in the city of 800,000.

The unrest in the capital Bishkek followed violent protests earlier in the week in the poorer south.

PUTIN'S SUPPORT

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was ready to work with the Kyrgyz opposition and offered refuge in Russia to Akayev, whose whereabouts is unknown.

Akayev was thought to have fled to neighboring Kazakhstan but a source close to the Kazakh administration said he had now left.

"We know these people (the opposition) pretty well and they have done quite a lot to establish good relations between Russia and Kyrgyzstan," Putin told reporters on a visit to Armenia.

In Bishkek, broken glass and naked mannequins ripped from shop windows littered the streets after a night of looting.

"They starting throwing stones at the windows and told us if we didn't get out they'd smash us up along with the shop," said Oleg Ivanchenko, head of security at one shop.

"They took everything away. I called the police but there was no answer."

THIRD EX-SOVIET REVOLUTION

Impoverished Kyrgyzstan becomes the third ex-Soviet state in two years, after Georgia and Ukraine, where a revolt after disputed elections has ousted the entrenched leadership.

Only Kyrgyzstan's revolution was violent and only its opposition government immediately won the backing of Moscow which once ruled the region.

And, unlike the new leaders in Georgia and Ukraine who have irked Moscow, Kyrgyzstan's opposition has shown no interest in shifting Westwards away from Russian influence.

Akayev, by the standards of the autocratic rulers who dominate Central Asia, was relatively liberal but failed to lift the population of 5 million out of poverty. Most get by on a dollar a day.

It was that, analysts say, which underpinned the protests against the results of parliamentary elections in February and March in which the opposition was routed and which international observers said were flawed.

Analysts say there is little love lost between the key opposition leaders, with Kulov, freed from jail by protesters on Thursday, seen as more popular than Bakiev.

Most of the opposition leaders were themselves top officials at some time during Akayev's 14-year rule. 

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Washington Post - 03.23.2005

Washington Post

Kyrgyz Leader Hints at Plot by West 

President Says Revolt Led by Same Forces as in Ukraine, Georgia 

By Peter Finn, Washington Post Foreign Service

MOSCOW -- President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan reacted defiantly Tuesday to anti-government protests that have swept the south of the Central Asian republic, charging in a speech to parliament that the "opposition is directed and funded from the outside."

He did not name the alleged foreign backers. But analysts said Akayev was voicing widespread suspicion among governments in the former Soviet republics that the recent popular revolts in Ukraine, Georgia and now Kyrgyzstan stem from Western, particularly U.S., efforts to install friendly leaders under the guise of building democracy.

"The events in Kyrgyzstan are not isolated from any of the so-called color revolutions that have been staged in other . . . countries over the last 18 months," Akayev said in a reference to the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia and last year's Orange Revolution in Ukraine. "Such revolutions, which are nothing more than coups, go beyond the framework of the law."

U.S. and European officials have dismissed such charges, saying that they have provided funding to nongovernmental organizations and in support of the elections in countries in the region but that they have not backed particular candidates or parties.

On Sunday and Monday, thousands of protesters, some of them armed with Molotov cocktails and clubs, seized government buildings in Osh, the country's second-largest city, and Jalal-Abad, as well as some smaller towns. Opposition leaders claimed they restored order Tuesday in Osh and initiated joint patrols by their supporters and police.

A spokesman for Akayev told the Associated Press that "criminal elements connected to the drug mafia are in complete control of the situation in Osh and Jalal-Abad, and are struggling to gain power." The city, along the fabled Silk Road, is regarded as a transit point for drugs from Afghanistan.

In his speech, the president repeated declarations that he would not use violence to put down the protests. 

The capital, Bishkek, which is in the north, remained quiet. Interior Ministry troops and riot police took up positions around government buildings, according to local news organizations. There were reports that some opposition supporters had left Osh in buses to organize protests in the capital.

In a rally in the north, 2,000 people gathered in the town of Talas late Monday to demand the "creation of a government of people's trust," according to news reports. Some protesters pitched tents in the town's central square in a nod to the tent city that was erected in Independence Square in Kiev last year.

Akayev, 60, spoke Tuesday to government deputies in the newly convened parliament. Opposition parties, which won only six seats in the body after two rounds of voting that ended March 13, said the protests were triggered by widespread ballot fraud. Among those elected were Akayev's son and daughter.

Opposition leaders have demanded Akayev's resignation, saying they believe he will use an overwhelming majority in parliament to extend his rule beyond the two terms allowed by the constitution. Presidential elections are scheduled for October, and Akayev has said he does not plan to run again.

On Monday, Akayev called for the Central Elections Commission and the country's Supreme Court to examine some of the results contested by the opposition.

Sulaiman Imanbayev, head of the commission, said Tuesday that results in 71 of the country's 75 electoral districts were legitimate. He said another vote would be required in one district and that disputed results in three other districts would be settled in court.

Anvar Artykov, who has declared himself the governor of Osh, ruled out any compromise. "The only compromise would be guaranteeing his safety after his resignation," he said of Akayev.

Akayev, speaking on television, was equally dismissive. "The people who set themselves up as leaders of the opposition cannot formulate acceptable conditions for talks," he said. "As far as my resignation is concerned, a decision on this is not to be taken by rallies. . . . This can be taken only by the people or parliament."

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Washington Post - 03.21.2005

Washington Post

Protesters in Kyrgyzstan Denounce Ballot Fraud

Police Station Burned; Offices Overrun 

By Kadyr Toktogulov, The Associated Press

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) - Thousands of protesters demanding the resignation of Kyrgyzstan's president over allegedly fraudulent elections rampaged through a southern city Sunday, burning down a police station and occupying government buildings.

The government said it was ready to negotiate, but Kurmanbek Bakiyev, an opposition leader and former prime minister, said talks would be possible only if President Askar Akayev was involved.

"All other lower-level negotiations will be just a waste of time," said Bakiyev, leader of the opposition People's Movement of Kyrgyzstan, who lost a bid for a seat in parliament last week.

Some analysts have suggested that Kyrgyzstan is ripe for an outburst of the kind of mass protests experienced in other former Soviet republics, such as those that recently brought pro-Western leaders to power in Ukraine and Georgia.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued a statement Sunday, urging the government and the opposition to refrain from using force and to begin a dialogue.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman, J. Adam Ereli, said, "U.S. officials have been in contact with both the government and opposition to reinforce this message."

As the police station smoldered in Jalal-Abad, 160 miles southwest of the capital, Bishkek, the regional governor said he lacked enough police to restore order.

Some injuries were reported, according to government officials in the south and a member of the opposition, but numbers were not available.

Protesters occupied seven government buildings across the country of 5 million people. But the riot Sunday was centered in Bakiyev's home town of Jalal-Abad.

The nationwide protests followed opposition charges that the government rigged the parliamentary balloting on Feb. 27 and a runoff on March 13 in which Akayev's loyalists won an overwhelming majority, and his daughter, Bermet Akayeva, and son, Aidar, won seats in parliament.

European governments and the United States also said the elections were seriously flawed, a charge denied by the government.

The opposition also has charged that Akayev, who is prohibited from seeking another term, planned to manipulate the vote to gain a compliant parliament that would amend the constitution to allow him a third term.

Akayev, 60, has denied wanting to serve another term.

As the protests have grown, the opposition has demanded Akayev's resignation and new elections.

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Washington Post - 03.14.2005

Washington Post

Kyrgyzstan Runoff Elections Said Marred

By BAGILA BUKHARBAYEVA, The Associated Press

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) - President Askar Akayev won an overwhelmingly loyal Parliament in runoff elections in Kyrgyzstan, according to results Monday. The opposition said the vote was riddled with abuses. 

The election leaves Akayev in a strong position to extend his 15-year rule as his opponents fear he will try to do. With more than 90 percent of votes counted, election officials said opposition candidates had won only four of the 43 seats at stake in the second round Sunday. 

But only 12 seats were contested by opposition candidates, who won just two of the 32 seats filled when voters first went to the polls Feb. 27. That gives the opposition just six of the total 75 seats. 

Opposition leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who plans to run for president, was trailing in his district by 24 percentage points, election officials said. 

Akayev's daughter, Bermet, won a comfortable victory in the runoff. His son, Aidar, had won a seat in the first round. 

Akayev, in power since 1990, says he does not want to extend his rule.He has already served two terms, currently the limit. 

However, the opposition fears his supporters are seeking to extend his rule or hand-pick his successor. A compliant Parliament could ease the task, which would require constitutional changes. 

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the first round of voting on Feb. 27 fell short of international standards, noting instances of vote buying, questionable disqualification of candidates and interference with the media. The government has dismissed those charges. 

The OSCE sent 60 observers to monitor the runoffs and planned to give its initial assessment later Monday. 

Opposition candidates said abuses were worse in the runoff balloting. 

"This is the dirtiest election I've seen," said Ishenbai Kadyrbekov, a disqualified opposition candidate. 

Opposition Ata Meken party leader Omurbek Tekebayev, who won in Sunday's runoffs, accused authorities of "all the traditional breaches, like vote buying and intimidation of voters." 

Edil Baisalov, head of the coalition of civic groups For Democracy and Civil Society which monitored the vote, said the runoffs were worse than the first round and marred by open and widespread vote buying and obstruction of election observers. He said voters were bused in to some polling stations. 

Election chief Sulaiman Imanbayev denied the allegations on Monday, saying only a few breaches were reported and would not affect the election outcome. 

All 75 seats in the country's Parliament are directly elected. About 1.5 million voters were eligible to cast ballots Sunday. 

Akayev is seen as the most liberal of the veteran leaders in ex-Soviet Central Asia, who all have clung to power through dubious legal changes and referendums. His departure in October could create a precedent of democratic transition of power in the region. 

Associated Press reporter Kadyr Toktogulov in Bishkek contributed to this story.

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New York Times - 03.14.2005

New York Times

Cries of Fraud Give Election in Kyrgyzstan Aura of Ukraine

By CHRISTOPHER PALA 

CHARBAK, Kyrgyzstan - This Central Asian republic on Sunday held the most fractious elections in its post-Soviet history, marked by protests and accusations of fraud.

After a first round of elections two weeks ago for the 77-seat single-chamber Parliament, there were widespread reports by international and local monitors of efforts to intimidate the press and to force civil servants to campaign for the two government parties. Vote buying was widely reported in the first round, and it continued into the second round, the monitors said.

The reports and public anger after the first round gave critics of President Askar Akayev hope that his handpicked successor might be defeated in a presidential election in the fall, a situation similar to the recent events in Ukraine. 

In Charbak, a hardscrabble village perched over the roaring Red River in the south of the country, Roma Gurushbekov, a 55-year-old teacher, said supporters of one businessman with strong government support were slipping 500 soms - about $12 - to anyone who would vote for him.

"It's disgusting," he fumed, standing soaked under a steady rain. "I make 650 soms a month, but I would never sell my vote to a know-nothing businessman."

Mr. Gurushbekov was supporting Kumanbek Bakiyev, a silver-haired former prime minister and technocrat with an easy smile, who is an acerbic critic of Mr. Akayev and is considered the likeliest opposition figure to defeat him or a designated successor in October.

Mr. Bakiyev gathered crowds at every polling place he visited Sunday. Dressed in a pinstriped suit and tie and knee-high rubber boots against the mud, he said, "The president promised transparent elections, but these are transparently fraudulent elections."

"If Akayev picks the wrong man, like Kuchma did in Ukraine, and people believe he stole the election, we may well have a repeat of the Orange Revolution," said Edil Baisalov, president of the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, the country's biggest election-monitoring body, earlier in the week in Bishkek, the capital. 

On Sunday, Mr. Baisalov said his observers were kept from doing their jobs and were threatened after filming instances of vote buying.

After the first round of voting, the biggest wave of popular discontent in Mr. Akayev's 15-year rule crystallized into civil disobedience in several cities. Kyrgyzstan - small and mountainous with a population of five million situated on the old Silk Road - has a history of rebelliousness. In October 1990, in the twilight of the Soviet Union, a spontaneous insurrection dubbed the Silk Revolution peacefully ousted the local Communist boss with such speed that the republic found itself without an alternative leader.

Chingiz Aitmatov, a respected novelist, was offered the presidency but turned it down. He recommended Mr. Akayev, who had made a name for himself as an eloquent reformist voice in the last Soviet Parliament.

But by the mid-1990s, after the strong-minded Parliament nearly impeached him on corruption charges, Mr. Akayev deftly maneuvered to strengthen his grip on the country, prolong his rule and stifle dissent, though less harshly than other Central Asian leaders have done in recent years.