Kyrgyz president regains political footing

9/18/06

Taking advantage of divisions within the opposition, Kyrgyzstan's president, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, is rapidly regaining his political footing after being knocked off balance by accusations that the National Security Service planted drugs on a prominent member of parliament.

In the past few days, damage-control measures undertaken by Bakiyev appear to have blunted the opposition's political momentum. Bakiyev critics had hoped to use the recent scandal – in which NSS agents were implicated in the set-up of Omurbek Tekebayev, a former parliament speaker and still fierce critic of the president – to prompt a radical change in Bakiyev's reform course, or even to force him from office. Tekebayev was arrested and briefly held in Poland on a drug possession charge. The implication of the NSS in the affair prompted the resignation of the service's chief, Busurmankul Tabaldiyev, and his deputy, Janysh Bakiyev, who is also the president's brother. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The president appeared in the legislature on September 14 to head off a parliamentary resolution calling for his resignation. In explaining his conduct, he insisted that both Tabaldiyev and Janysh Bakiyev "had nothing to do" with the set-up of Tekebayev, the AKIpress news agency reported. He also appeared to open the way for their return to the security service, pending the results of various official inquiries. "I agreed that until the end of the investigation both of them have to be suspended from their work," Bakiyev said. He suggested that foreign agents might have put heroin in Tekebayev's luggage in an effort to destabilize Kyrgyzstan.

In addition, Bakiyev adamantly denied accusations that he met in late July with fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a meeting that would have violated international agreements concerning extradition. "I have never seen him [Berezovsky] and have never had any relations with him," Bakiyev said.

He voiced vigorous opposition to a parliamentary attempt to open its own investigation into the Tekebayev affair. "Parliament should be a parliament, and not an investigative or punitive body," Bakiyev said.

Meanwhile, the opposition continues to struggle. Radical opposition leaders and their supporters tried to maintain the pressure on Bakiyev during a mass meeting in Aksy, the scene of a bloody confrontation in 2002 between police and protesters. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The so-called kurultai adopted the type of resolution that the national parliament so far has shied away from – demanding that Bakiyev resign unless he dismisses all his relatives from government posts, undertakes far-reaching constitutional reform and gives an accounting of security troops' behavior during the Aksy events.

One of the leading figures associated with the kurultai, Azimbek Beknazarov, head of the Asaba Party, had vowed that 15,000 people would attend the meeting. Journalists estimated only about 2,000 people actually showed up. The low attendance appeared to undercut the significance of the meeting's resolution.

Since the Tekebayev scandal broke, radicals, including Beknazarov, have made regime change their top priority. Moderates within the opposition, on the other hand, believe the emphasis should be on promoting constitutional reform.

The opposition cause has not been helped by the fact that a witness, Nadir Mamirov, who implicated Janysh Bakiyev in the Tekebayev affair, has subsequently changed his story, and now denies that the president's brother ordered drugs to be placed in the MPs luggage.

Observers say state-controlled media outlets, including Vecherny Bishkek and the National TV Corp., have been used in an attempt to erode public support for the opposition. For example, a September 16 commentary published in Vecherny Bishkek quoted political analyst Imankadyr Rysaliev as warning that opposition leaders were intent on destabilizing Kyrgyzstan. "If we follow political extremists, this can lead to civic confrontation and blood," Rysaliev said.

Posted September 18, 2006 © Eurasianet