Russian Xenophobia

Almost 20% of Kyrgyz GDP is formed from remittances sent from overseas, mainly from Russia. According to unofficial estimates (which are more realistic) more than 1 000 000 Kyrgyz citzens work in Russia.

Although, living conditions of most labor migrants are terrible, this year has started with even more disturbing facts of murders allegedly based on ethnic hatred. Most of the murders through numerous stab-wounds, are affiliated with so called "skinheads", a group of extremely nationalist young men, which hunt down people of non-slavic dissidence.

Russian xenophobic attitude has always been an issue since the start of Kyrgyz-Russian relations. Even Soviet times cannot deny such attitude in Kyrgyz SSR as well as in Russia. Any USSR born Kyrgyz will cofirm this. And there have been attacks and killings in Russia since the late 90's. Presently, it is far from mass movements of nazis or ethnic genocide, however, it has been a hot issue in the media for the last two months. Why?

1. Because the number of migrants is increasing, thus the level of crimes with their participation also increases
2. There have not been much of immigration in the territory of former USSR, except for 1930's. It takes time to establish cultural tolerance.
3. Xenophobic attitude always existed, heavily tabooed in Soviet times. Political changes in the late 20 years gave freedom to positive as well as negative attitudes.
4. First wave of immigrants have settled down their immediate material needs and started to seek for fulfillment of higher needs like equality and fair treatment.

Unfortunately, it is normal process and time is the main factor. Another factor is effort done by Russian government and immigrant diasporas to demand their rights in the legal framework.

Salaries

Economist:

BERTIE AHERN, Ireland's taoiseach (prime minister), has good reason to smile. He recently accepted his 26th pay rise in ten years, taking his annual salary to €310,000 ($446,000). He is now better rewarded for leading a country than most of his counterparts, including George Bush. Nicolas Sarkozy's pay increase this week of around 140% only bumps France's president up to $346,000 a year. Heading a small, rich country is the best bet. Earlier this year, Singapore's prime minister was awarded a 26% rise to some $2.1m.

To see the list of Top 5 state leaders recieving highest salaries go here:

http://economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10064094

Atambayev's blog

No. Looks like it is not really Almazbek Atambayev's (our PM) blog. But I was pleaseantly surprised to follow this link almazbek-atambayev-nts.blogspot.com, for somewhere deepdown, there was a hope that our politicians are interested in new means of interaction. However, was disappointed that somebody just uses this title to cover political stories from Kyrgyzstan.

However, the title did catch your attention did not it?

Tightening the Grip

AKIpress reported that Central Election Committee (CEC) gave three day period for parties to register. According to their press release, it starts on the day when elections were announced.

However, President has set the election date for December 16, 2007 yesterday (October 23). Maybe I am missing out some legal nuances here, but as far as I understand parties have only 2 days left, considering the fact that today is over.

As I was saying before, many were critical of the short term for the Referendum- one month. However, despite of all the criticism, it has passed with inflated turnout numbers and ballot stuffing, which was followed by immediate dissolution of the current Parliament. CEC has not even announced the referendum results, when our parliamentarians filled the rows of unemployed.

Seems like President decided to crackdown on the opposition completely, cutting off possible ways to consolidate, since it was in a rather disbursed state after escalated clashes with government for the past year.

There was a lot of reshuffling among parties since new electoral system was introduced so abruptly, on an extremely short notice. Thus a lot of parties, who are by default weak in Kyrgyzstan, are gathering people for their lists with one hand, while the other hand is writing the charter and programs.

Ata Meken- one of the main opposition parties announced that they are going to unite with Ak Shumkar- another leading parties in opposition bloc. Seems like they won't have much time to discuss the terms of unification, if only 2 days is enough for them.

President is rather quickly and very surely tightening the grip.

Referendum: part II

Congratulations! We, as a people of Kyrgyzstan, live under a new Constitution (5th or 6th). Let us start with the fact that the turnout was ~85% (!) (preliminary). I doubt that even developed and democratic states of the West enjoy such numbers. But we do! How? Well, governments have a magic wand called "administrative resource", magical stroke of which makes students, doctors, teachers etc. go and vote for whatever they want. Some become so enchanted that they go and vote 5 or 6 times.

Well, our government likes to use this wand a lot, or rather always. This time government was so nice and helpful that voters did not even have to go to polling stations: they voted for you, so you can stay at home and enjoy the weekend. Thus I am confident, that my beloved government made sure my conscious "YES" ballot is somewhere in the Central election committe (CEC) vaults, although I did not even think about the referendum that day.

Now, guess how many voted "YES" (like me) ~75% of the total votes. A question that struck me first- "could our President at least TRY to give more realistic numbers?!". OK, no further comments.

Today, I read in the news that the President is dissolving the Parliament on the grounds that the latter tried to overrule Constitutional Court. Certainly, President had to chip in because he is the "guarantor" of the main law. Another question popped up: why so fast?! CEC has not even announced the referendum results, while decree that dissmissed Jogorku Kenesh was already signed. Preliminary date for elections- December 16, 2007.

This past referendum marked the start of the "hot" winter, since upcoming elections will be different- party lists, according to our new Electoral Code that was also voted "YES" along with C. We will get to observe one of the largest political experiments in Central Asia- a parliament based on party lists only. Particularly I am curious to see how parties and individuals will behave, because paties are extremely weak and based on leaders rather than ideas.

Of course, we already have a party-nominee for Parliament majority- Ak Jol People's Party (recently created Presidential party). And certainly, the "magic wand" will play its part, however many predict that it will be more difficult to obtain such overwhelming numbers for the elections. Who knows? Maybe the stroke will be harder this time.

PS my preliminary general opinion about the elections: "Ak Jol was not created to participate in the elections, elections were called so that Ak Jol can pass- and so shall it be"