Ata-Jurt leader Kamchybek Tashiev
Yesterday, on October 10, Kyrgyz voters cast their ballots for a new parliament. Overall, there were not a lot of new faces chosen, casting doubt on a fresh start after June’s riots and killings, when over 400 people reportedly died and more than 400,000 were forced out of their homes. On the other hand, voter turnout was high, with nearly 57 percent of the country’s 2.8 million registered voters participating. In a sign that people may be turning to legal mechanisms to solve social tensions, turnout was higher in the southern city of Osh, one of the epicenters of deadly interethnic violence in June. And then again, Ata-Jurt ran on statements like this “The titular ethnicity should be titular, it cannot be lower than other ethnicities living in this country. Let them respect our traditions, language and history, only then people will live peacefully. But if any nationality in our country, Russian, Uzbek, Turkish or Chinese claim they are on a par with the Kyrgyz or above them, then the state will collapse,” stated Kamchybek Tashiev, a member of Ata Jurt Party (www.fergana.ru, September 16).
The Ata-Jurt party has emerged with 8.69 percent, enough for a narrow plurality. According to RFE/RL, Ata-Jurt has strong support among ethnic Kyrgyz in the south and is led by former officials from the government ousted just six months ago. The Social-Democratic Party, one of the architects of the new constitution that hands additional powers to the incoming parliament, is second with 8.13 percent of the vote.
Votes were highly dispersed, with just five parties passing the 5-percent threshold for representation in the 120-seat parliament, signaling complications in forming a coalition government that would have to bring three of the five together. Final results are expected to be released before the end of this week.
Ata-Jurt is led by Bakiev’s former minister of emergency situations, Kamchibek Tashiev, former Bishkek Mayor Nariman Tyuleev, and former tax police head Akhmat Keldibekov. As recently as last week, relatives of people killed by government forces in April vandalized the party’s headquarters in the northern capital, Bishkek.
While I won’t guess the possible make-up of the future coalition government, it is safe to say there are a lot of possible permutations. The important result will be seen in how the government seeks to legitimize itself. Will it be through ethnic nationalism and meetings with the Russian president and prime minister, or will Kyrgyz leaders find a way to move past those failed tropes and machinations? We’ll have to wait and see, with RFE/RL’s James Kirchic sounding pessimistic in his “Dispatch from the Knife’s Edge”. And unless political leaders can figure out how to increase economic development in an equitable manner, I’ll have to side with Kirchic.
