Analysis: Bakiyev takes power in Kyrgyzstan
By Martin Sieff, UPI Senior News Analyst

Washington Times
March 25 2005

Washington, DC, Mar. 25 (UPI) — Moving with lightning speed, former
Prime Minister Kurmanbek Bakiyev proclaimed himself interim president
and prime minister of Kyrgyzstan Friday.

His move came only a day after protestors in the capital Bishkek
stormed the presidential compound and previous President Askar
Akayev fled the country. Akayev, who had ruled the country for 15
years — even before the disintegration of the Soviet Union — still
claimed to be president and tried to sound a defiant note Friday. “An
unconstitutional coup d’etat has been staged in Kyrgyzstan,” he said
in a statement. “My current stay outside the country is temporary.
Rumors of my resignation are deliberate, malicious lies.”

But Akayev’s claims appeared to be bravado. He appeared to have no
popular base left in the impoverished little landlocked former Soviet
republic of 5 million people in the heart of Central Asia and even
his own security forces melted away like snow on a summer’s day in
the Gobi Desert when they were supposed to defend his interests.
Akayev tried to explain that away in his statement by claiming,
“I firmly stated that I would not use force against my people,”
although I the past he had never hesitated to do so.

Akayev did not identify where he was. Russian and Kyrgyz opposition
leader said Friday that they were not sure yet of his location. An
Itar-Tass report Thursday said he had initially fled to neighboring
Kazakhstan.

Bakiyev is a former prime minister who served under Akayev and resigned
in 2002. He is credited with having a vastly superior grasp of economic
policy than Akayev, an important qualification as the popular protests
across southern Kyrgyzstan that led to the president’s ouster were
fanned by growing poverty and resentment.

And as leader of the People’s Movement of Kyrgyzstan, the 55-year-old
Bakiyev controls the largest and best organized opposition bloc,
though it is far from commanding the direct support of all opposition
factions, let alone the entire country. He already has a viable,
organized political movement at his command, and he was at the
forefront of the dramatic protests that toppled Akayev Thursday.

Bakiyev was quick to create at least the initial structure of a
functioning national government Thursday and Friday. He has already
appointed his own foreign minister, defense minister and finance
minister as well as governors for the Cho region in the north and
Jalal-Abad and Osh regions in the south.

Bakiyev told the Kyrgyz Parliament Friday he would present his new
interim government to the Kyrgyz Parliament for approval and it would
only rule for three months.

Interfax news agency reported him as saying, “Let me create an
executive body of power that will not last forever, but for about
three months.”

Born in 1949, Bakiyev served as a conscript in the Soviet Red Army
and was a professional engineer before rising in the state system of
independent Kyrgyzstan under Akayev. He was governor of the Cho region
from 1997 to 2000 and then served as Akayev’s prime minister for two
years. Ironically, he was forced to take responsibility and resign
after opposition protests were crushed by security forces with deadly
force in 2002 in southern cities, the very same locations where the
protests that toppled Akayev erupted this month.

Bakiyev then emerged as the most important opposition leader
challenging Akayev. He and his supporters claim that their Popular
Movement won the Feb. 27 and March 13 run-off parliamentary elections
but Akayev fixed the results. This scenario echoed the widespread anger
across Ukraine that drove the November-January Orange Revolution that
brought pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko to power.

However, although Kyrgyzstan is vastly smaller than Ukraine with
only around one-tenth the population, its “Tulip Revolution” already
presents Bakiyev with challenges that Yushchenko never had to face.

Unlike the entirely peaceful Georgian “Revolution of Roses” and the
events in Ukraine, the Kyrgyz protests have already turned violent,
with the flight of Akayev triggering what Felix Kulov, whom Bakiyev has
already appointed head of all Kyrgyzstan’s law enforcement agencies,
called an “orgy” of looting in downtown Bishkek At least three people
were killed in the disturbances Thursday night around 100 were injured
according to early opposition estimates..

“We have arrested many people, we are trying to do something,” Kulov
said. But, he added, “We physically lack people.”

Not having an effective security infrastructure threatens to become
the biggest problem Bakiyev, Kulov and their colleagues face in
establishing a functioning government and getting the country on a
stable footing again.

Russia has taken a cautious role in viewing the Kyrgyz events.
President Vladimir Putin did not want to risk backing an ineffectual
loser as happened when he openly supported then-Ukrainian Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych in his ultimately futile campaign against
Yushchenko. Still, the Russian leader was hardly supportive of the
new leaders in Bishkek Friday.

“It is unfortunate that yet again in the post-Soviet area political
problems are resolved illegally and are accompanied by pogroms and
human victims,” he said during a visit to Armenia.

Putin also welcomed early statements by the new Kyrgyz leaders seeking
to rebuild their ties with Russia. However, they appear more likely
to seek Georgian and Ukrainian advice first.

What is clear is that given Kyrgyzstan’s well-documented problems of
poverty, Islamic extremism and drug-smuggling as well as its lack of
any experience of constitutional democracy whatsoever, its hopeful
new leaders will need all the help they can get.