POPULIST, CONVICTED KIDNAPPER ELECTED KYRGYZSTAN PRESIDENT

MOSCOW

A populist politician and convicted kidnapper won a landslide victory Sunday in a snap presidential election in Kyrgyzstan triggered by a popular uprising against the previous government.

Sadyr Japarov, the winning candidate, got nearly 80 percent of the vote, according to the central electoral commission of the mountainous country, the only democracy in Central Asia. More than 80 percent of voters also supported Japarov’s proposal to redistribute political power away from Parliament and into the president’s hands.

In September, Japarov, 52, was still in jail, serving a lengthy term for orchestrating the kidnapping of a provincial governor, a charge he denounced as politically motivated. A violent upheaval that erupted in October over a disputed parliamentary election sprung Japarov from a prison cell to the prime minister’s chair.

A few days later, he assumed the interim presidency before resigning to run for that office. The country’s main investigative body quickly canceled Japarov’s conviction.

Reviled by his critics as a corrupt nationalist with links to organized crime, Japarov tried to consolidate society behind his campaign. There were scattered reports of voting irregularities as of late Sunday, when the election authorities said turnout was around 39 percent.

On Sunday night at a news conference in the capital, Bishkek, he said Kyrgyzstan needs political stability now most of all.

“I call on all opponents to unite; the minority should submit to the majority,” Japarov said during the news conference. “I come to power during challenging times; there is a crisis everywhere.”

Arkady Dubnov, a Central Asia expert in Moscow, described Japarov as a populist “Robin Hood” figure who came to power on the promise of giving people quick relief. Speaking Sunday on Ekho Moskvy, a Russian radio station, Dubnov noted that more upheaval was inevitable in Kyrgyzstan.

“The way how the whole system of power in Kyrgyzstan was whipped and uprooted in just 48 hours shows how government institutions are unstable in this country,” he said.