The revolution has a name, even though it hasn't happened.
Ahead of tomorrow's parliamentary elections in Kyrgyzstan, speculation is high that this remote, mountainous ex-Soviet republic is on the verge of an uprising like those in Georgia and Ukraine that were sparked by election fraud.
PHOTO: AP
News media, drawing stylistically on Georgia's "Rose Revolution" and Ukraine's "Orange Revolution," have begun calling Kyrgyzstan's national uprising the "Tulip Revolution."
There isn't a trace of Kyrgyzstan's favorite flower to be seen amid February's snows, but signs of discontent are rising.
The vote is a key test for Kyrgyzstan, once seen as an "island of democracy" in former Soviet Central Asia but now troubled by increasing complaints of repression. It will be closely watched by international observers and domestic politicians not only for its own importance, but as a harbinger of how the October presidential election is likely to be conducted.
The vote also is likely to be watched closely by Washington and the Kremlin, which have strategic interests in stability in Kyrgyzstan, where both Russia and the US have military bases.
Ahead of the vote, the most volatile issue has not been the prospect of vote fraud, as was the case in Ukraine and Georgia, but the blocking of prominent politicians from running at all. Demonstrators backing two disqualified candidates blocked key roads this week, shutting down a main trade corridor to China and slowing production at the Kumtor gold mine, a key piece of the economy of the country of 5 million.
Another leading opposition figure, Roza Otunbayeva, was denied registration as a candidate on the grounds that she did not meet the requirement of having been a resident for the last five years -- but the reason she couldn't meet it was because she had been one of Kyrgyzstan's top diplomats, posted to Britain and the US as well as working as a UN envoy for Abkhazia.
Otunbayeva wanted to run for a seat in the same district where Akayev's daughter, Bermet, is a candidate. That added to concerns the government was using legal hairsplitting to marginalize Otunbayeva and she now is seen as likely a central figure if protests break out.
But Otunbayeva denies that she and her colleagues in the Ata-Jurt political movement are preparing to take to the streets.
"We in the opposition isn't talking about a revolution of any kind," she said recently during a trip to Moscow. "We're talking about a peaceful, constitutional change of power."
Such a transition once seemed likely in Kyrgyzstan. Akayev, who has led the country since independence from the Soviet Union, was regarded as the most reform-minded of the Central Asian leaders and the country won praise for its comparative openness.
But Akayev in recent years has shown increasing signs of cracking down. In 2002, his reputation was tarnished after police killed six demonstrators who were protesting the arrest of an opposition lawmaker.
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