Five parties passed the threshold yesterday to win seats in Kyrgyzstan’s new parliament after an election aimed at shifting the strategic Central Asian nation away from failed authoritarian rule. Kyrgyzstan is trying to form the first parliamentary democracy in a region dominated by post-Soviet strongmen, only four months after more than 400 people were killed in the country’s worst bloodshed in modern history.
Ata Zhurt, whose members include former colleagues of ousted Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, held a narrow lead with 93 percent of votes counted, the Central Election Commission said.
Sunday’s election passed without violence and only minor reports of fraud. More than half of the electorate voted.
Photo: AFP
“We have not known such elections for the last two decades,” Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva said in a televised address. “We can be proud of the fact that these elections were completely different to those we have seen before.”
The parliament will be the country’s main decision-making body, assuming more power than the president. Otunbayeva said she would remain president until Dec. 31 next year.
Coalition-building will be needed to forge a majority with the right to select a prime minister, politicians said.
“This is the first time that the Kyrgyz people have tasted democracy,” said Chynybai Tursunbekov, candidate for the Social-Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, second in the polls.
Otunbayeva came to power after a popular revolt in April toppled Bakiyev, a former opposition leader who had taken over after his Soviet-era predecessor was chased from office by street protesters in 2005. Bakiyev is now in exile in Belarus.
The commission said that five parties out of the 29 that contested the polls had won more than 5 percent of the nationwide vote and more than 0.5 percent in each of the country’s regions, the minimum requirement to enter parliament.
Turnout was 57 percent and the highest percentage of voters, 66 percent, was in Osh, scene of the June violence.
Election rules stipulate that no single party will be allotted more than 65 of the 120 seats in parliament. The seats will be distributed proportionately to those parties that pass the entry threshold.
The wide choice of candidates and a vibrant campaign set Kyrgyzstan’s election apart from other votes in Central Asia and brought the country closer to meeting its democratic commitments, observers said yesterday.
However, Kyrgyzstan’s legislation needs “profound reform” under a new government to ensure that future votes are fair, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation (OSCE)’s election monitoring arm said in a statement.
“I have observed many elections in Central Asia over the years, but this is the first election where I could not predict the outcome,” said Morten Hoeglund, special coordinator of the short-term OSCE observer mission to Kyrgyzstan.
“The last few weeks show that Kyrgyzstan can hold elections marked by pluralism, an independent election administration and respect for fundamental freedoms,” said Corien Jonker, head of the long-term observation mission deployed by the OSCE. “Now the challenge is to stay on course and tackle the remaining shortcomings.”
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