Kyrgyzstan’s interim government on Wednesday set a date for parliamentary and presidential elections, stepping up efforts to build legitimacy after the country’s ousted president fled into exile.
The elections will be held on Oct. 10, said Omurbek Tekebayev, deputy head of the interim government, which took power two weeks ago in a popular uprising that ousted former Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Speaking on national television, Tekebayev said the country would also hold a referendum on a new constitution on June 27.
STABILITY
The US and EU had urged the interim government to hold elections in order to restore stability in Kyrgyzstan.
Tekebayev said the new constitution to be presented to voters in the June 27 referendum would make Kyrgyzstan a parliamentary republic, reduce the powers of the president and prevent authoritarianism.
“In the new draft, the state and political system will be set up to prevent concentration of power in one hands [sic],” Tekebayev said. “The president will lose his immunity and his family will not be subsidized by the state. The head of state will live on his own salary.”
The announcement of the election date came a day after Bakiyev broke his silence for the first time since fleeing into exile last week in order to declare that he still regarded himself as Kyrgyzstan’s president.
“I do not recognize my resignation. Nine months ago the people of Kyrgyzstan elected me their president and there is no power that can stop me. Only death can stop me,” Bakiyev said in the Belarussian capital Minsk.
Bakiyev also denounced the interim government as “bandits” and urged the international community to refrain from granting them legitimacy.
MALE BRAVADO
The leader of the interim government, Roza Otunbayeva, dismissed Bakiyev’s combative declaration as “the bravado of a man in the agony of his own helplessness.”
The interim government said Bakiyev submitted his resignation as one of the conditions for being allowed to leave Kyrgyzstan, and his signed resignation letter had been shown on television.
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