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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Kyrgyzstan
Index
As independence has progressed, politics have grown increasingly tangled
in Kyrgyzstan. President Akayev, who took office amid a chain of events
that lent credence to an idealistic promise of democratic reform and
stability, has proven more able to formulate goals than to carry them out.
Although a constitution was ratified in 1993, many terms of that document
have not yet gone into force.
Background
In March 1990, while still part of the Soviet Union, the republic
elected a 350-member Jogorku Kenesh (parliament), which remained in power
until it dissolved itself in September 1994. This body was elected under
the rules prescribed by the perestroika (see Glossary) policy of
Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, which mandated that at least 80
percent of legislative seats be contested even though communists likely
would win most seats. In the case of Kyrgyzstan, five seats went to the
initial opposition movement, the Democratic Movement of Kyrgyzstan (DDK).
Over time it has become apparent that President Akayev prefers dealing
with administrators subordinate to him rather than with legislators. The
initial harmony between Akayev and the parliament began to sour in 1993. A
number of specific points of contention arose, most of them related to
growing legislative resistance to what was widely viewed to be government
corruption and mismanagement. Throughout 1993 the parliament sought
aggressively to extend control over the executive branch. The allotment of
development concessions for two of the republic's largest gold deposits
was a particular rallying point (see Natural Resources, this ch.). The
chief representative of Cameco, Boris Birshtein, was a Swiss citizen who
had been named in a number of financial scandals in Russia and elsewhere
in the CIS. When it was discovered that the Kyrgyzstani negotiating team
that had sealed the Cameco transaction had financial interests in the
deal, the agreement nearly was cancelled entirely. In December 1993,
public protest about this gold concession brought down the government of
Prime Minister Tursunbek Chyngyshev and badly damaged Akayev's popularity
and credibility.
Chyngyshev was replaced by Apas Jumagulov, who had been prime minister
during the late Soviet period. Jumagulov was reappointed in March 1995 and
again in March 1996. Akayev was not publicly accused of being involved in
the gold scandals, but numerous rumors have mentioned corruption and
influence-peddling in the Akayev family, especially in the entourage of
his wife. As these rumors circulated more widely, President Akayev held a
public referendum of approval for his presidency in January 1994. Most
impartial observers regarded the 96 percent approval that Akayev claimed
after the referendum as a political fiction.
Data as of March 1996
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