Translated material
Constitutional infarction
The second Kyrgyz revolution is canceled
Yesterday, the first blood was shed on the streets of Bishkek since the start of the open-ended opposition rally. Four people were hospitalized with minor gunshot wounds received during clashes between opposition supporters and counter-protesters organized by pro-government forces. Two more people were taken away with suspected heart attacks.The stage that the Kyrgyz crisis is going through really resembles a pre-infarction state. Shaking the country, which has not yet recovered from the events of March 24 last year, which led to the collapse of power, the element of street rallies initiated by the opposition moved yesterday into the walls of parliament. And it resulted in an obvious parliamentary crisis. The fact is that since yesterday, at the suggestion of deputies, two constitutions have taken place in Kyrgyzstan. One current one, adopted under ex-president Askar Akayev, defines the country as a presidential republic. The second, establishing a parliamentary form of government, was adopted on the night of November 7 by a group of opposition deputies who proclaimed themselves, as the Vremya Novostei newspaper suggested yesterday, a “constituent assembly.” By yesterday morning, 45 deputies had signed the opposition draft of the basic law - all those who decided to arrive at night for an emergency meeting of parliament.
Explaining to journalists the actions of the opposition, one of its leaders, ex-speaker of parliament Omurbek Tekebayev, first recalled the events of March 2005 in epic tones: “One day, under the cover of darkness, we were forced to appoint Kurmanbek Bakiyev as president, and a year and a half later, a political and social crisis erupted in the country.” -moral crisis." And only then Mr. Tekebaev told what was done under the cover of another night - “from November 6 to 7, when we, the deputies, took on a historical mission and convened a constituent assembly, established a draft constitution that would take into account the interests of all layers society."
At the same time, the ex-speaker is aware of the illegitimacy of this constitution. “We want to hold a number of public events in order to make it legitimate with the help of public opinion,” the deputy said. “More than 20 draft constitutions were proposed to the president, but he did not act,” Tekebaev said. “Seeing the inaction of the authorities, the people took the initiative into their own hands.”
The interpretation of the will of the people in the mouth of the ex-speaker looks controversial, if only because the constitutional majority is 51 votes, i.e. Supporters of a presidential republic did not win two-thirds of the 75-seat parliament. In addition, deputies know that the existing legislation in the country does not prescribe the procedure for adopting a new constitution. Yesterday, this was confirmed by the Chairman of the Constitutional Court, Cholpon Baekova, speaking in parliament, noting that the deputies themselves must first fill this gap.
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and Prime Minister Felix Kulov, as befits the tandem ruling the country, yesterday morning attended a press conference together for the first time to express their attitude to what was happening. Bakiyev called this an attempt by the opposition to “usurp power in the country,” thus returning similar accusations against him from its side. “I am not bloodthirsty or vengeful and will not organize persecution of the opposition,” the president said and even made it clear that he was not going to dissolve the parliament. “The deputies, having made some noise and calmed down, will enter the legal field,” he peacefully predicted. Prime Minister Felix Kulov emphasized that they “must adopt the constitution exclusively through constitutional means.” The prime minister said that “the authorities will not allow unrest and will do everything to prevent it.”
The harsh statements of the president and prime minister destroyed the hopes of those opposition leaders who were counting on a split within the tandem and even that Kulov would go over to the side of the “constituent assembly.” Moreover, the decisiveness of the “Bakiyev-Kulov resistance” apparently aroused fears that “measures” would still be taken against the opposition deputies. In the crowd on the central square of Bishkek - Ala-too, rumors began to spread that in the evening the “trouble-making deputies” would be “caught and put” in temporary detention centers.” According to some observers in the Kyrgyz capital, these sentiments could have provoked the decision to escalate on the streets. As the Fergana.Ru news agency quotes one of the opposition leaders, the crowd from Ala-Too Square went to Old Square in front of the parliament to “fraternize” with the supporters of President Bakiev located there. The result of this “fraternization” was four wounded. Sticks, stones and empty bottles were used. The serious scale of the casualties—several dozen people “fraternized” on both sides—was prevented by the intervention of riot police and police cadets, who received orders to use tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the crowd.
Such a decisive style of behavior of the executive branch in relation to supporters of the “constituent assembly” allowed President Bakiyev to inform his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin by telephone late yesterday afternoon that “the situation in the country is under the control of the official authorities.” Of course, the conversation “touched up the issues of the upcoming CIS summit at the end of November, as well as current issues of bilateral relations.” Bakiyev discussed the same “issues” yesterday with his closest neighbors, the presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan Nursultan Nazarbayev and Islam Karimov. It is obvious that the Uzbek president remembers well that turbulent events in Kyrgyzstan a year and a half ago preceded the bloodshed in Andijan in May of the same year. The possibility of destabilization in the region as a result of another “political and social-moral crisis” in Kyrgyzstan worries not only Astana, Tashkent and Moscow. On the second day of the opposition rally, November 3, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the head of the German Foreign Ministry, which will assume the presidency of the European Union from January 2007, arrived in Bishkek. According to Vremya Novostei information obtained from informed sources in Bishkek, the German minister made it clear that ensuring stability in Central Asia is one of the main priorities of the German presidency.
Similar signals, apparently, were clearly conveyed to the opposition leaders - they say that their unconstitutional actions will not be recognized as legitimate abroad. As a result, last night it became known that the second night meeting of parliament, initiated by the opposition, had been canceled. Instead, a compromise decision was announced to begin negotiations between two groups of deputies, opposition and pro-presidential, four people on each side, to reach a consensus on developing a constitution. The official procedure for adopting a new draft fundamental law should begin today, Parliament Speaker Marat Sultanov said late yesterday.
The head of the opposition group, former Prosecutor General Azimbek Beknazarov, expressed a desire (that’s right, he no longer demanded) that parliamentary debates be broadcast on television. And the deputy asked the protesters to say “thank you” for their support and asked them to go home. The revolution in Kyrgyzstan is apparently cancelled.