Fromhiding, Kyrgyzstan’s president quits
MOSCOW — After more than a week in hiding following a disputed election, the president of Kyrgyzstan — Central Asia’s only democracy — announced his plans Thursday to resign, saying he didn’t 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, President Sooronbai Jeenbekov said he had “taken a decision to resign,” although he didn’t specify whether he already had 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 by Oct. 4 parliamentary elections that were marred by widespread vote-buying, stormed the president’s office and other government buildings in the capital,
Bishkek.
He was rumored to have taken refuge in a Russian military air base in the town of Kant, about 12 miles from Bishkek, but his exact whereabouts remained unclear.
His departure is the third time
in 15 years that violent protests have toppled a president of Kyrgyzstan, the only country in the region with a vibrant civil society, a relatively free press and regular competitive elections for Parliament and the presidency.
With the president apparently out of the way, his role as head of state — and commander in chief of the armed forces — is taken by the speaker of Parliament, who also has come under mounting pressure to resign.
In what’s formally a parliamentary democracy, however, the governing of Kyrgyzstan falls to Sadyr Japarov, a convicted kidnapper who was sprung from jail last week 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 and give back a peaceful life to the people of Bishkek.”