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Kyrgyz vote may be C Asia’s first fair election

BISHKEK: Kyrgyzstan holds a presidential election on Sunday that could be the first vote judged free and fair in Central Asia but is likely to leave a government still seeking to prove it controls the mountainous state.

The election was called to seek a successor to former President Askar Akayev, who ruled the poor country for nearly 15 years but was ousted in March when he fled violent protests against a flawed parliamentary election. Acting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a 54-year-old former prime minister under Akayev who later joined the opposition and played a key role in the protests, is widely expected to be the victor. However, the run-up to the election has been marked by violent incidents, such as the shooting dead of a member of parliament, the storming by protesters of the main government building and growing crime in the south of the country.

Highlighting divisions in Bakiyev’s acting government, it has not spoken with one voice on the rights of refugees who fled a government crackdown in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

The security services last month sent four refugees whom it considered criminals back to Uzbekistan, where the United Nations said they might face torture or summary execution, days after the Foreign Ministry said it would do so only after considering the evidence. The five former Soviet Central Asian states have a history of flawed elections and government pressure on opposition parties and independent media. The leaders of oil-rich Kazakhstan, authoritarian Uzbekistan and secretive Turkmenistan have all been in power since Soviet days while Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov was installed during a civil war between 1992 and 1997. “This could be the first free and fair election in C Asia,” said Michael Hall, C Asia project director for Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. reuters

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