From hiding, Kyrgyzstan’s president says he’s quitting
MOSCOW — After more than aweek in hiding following a disputed election, the president of Kyrgyzstan — Central Asia’s only democracy — on Thursday announced his plans to resign, saying that he did not want to go down in history as a leader “who shed blood and shot at his own citizens.”
In a statement issued from an undisclosed location, the president, Sooronbai Jeenbekov, said he had “taken a decision to resign,” although he did not specify whether he had already quit.
Just a few hours earlier, Jeenbekov had assured a delegation of former senior officials and political veterans that he had no plans to step down and would stand firm against a power grab widely believed to be backed by criminal elements.
Feliks Kulov, a former prime minister who met with the president Thursday, voiced concern over Jeenbekov’s abrupt change of heart, speculating in a post on Facebook that the leader had been “presented with a choice: voluntary resignation or a real war.”
The day’s dizzying events, which left a freed prisoner in charge of the government as prime minister, seemed to signal the end of what began as a protest by mainstream opposition forces over a rigged election and degenerated last week into a reign of chaos fueled by thugs and criminals.
Jeenbekov vanished from view after protesters, enraged byOct. 4 parliamentary elections that were marred bywidespread votebuying, stormed the president’s office and other government buildings in the capital, Bishkek. He was rumored to have taken refuge in aRussian military air base in the town of Kant, about 12 miles from Bishkek, but his exact whereabouts remained unclear.
With the president apparently out of the way, his role as head of state — and commander in chief of the armed forces — would be taken by the speaker of Parliament, who has also come undermounting pressure to resign.
In what is formally a parliamentary democracy, however, the governing of Kyrgyzstan falls to Sadyr Japarov, a convicted kidnapper who was sprung from jail lastweek by anti-government protesters. He was named prime minister Saturday by lawmakers who gathered for an unusual and, his opponents say, illegal session without a quorum at the president’s official residence.
In announcing his resignation, Jeenbekov, who last week ordered troops into the capital to restore order, called on Japarov and rival politicians to “withdraw their supporters from the capital.”