Moscow: In a development that could have
far reaching political impact in the region, Kyrgyzstan is all
set to become Central Asia's first Parliamentary democracy, with a overwhelming 90.55 per cent voters backing a new
constitution which strips the President's wide ranging powers.
After publishing the official results of the June 27
referendum, the Kyrgyz Central Election Commission (CEC) on Friday
declared Roza Otunbayeva as the transitional president of the
Central Asian republic till December 31, 2011.
It formally dissolved the presidential parliament,
which was in jeopardy in the wake of violent ouster of
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev's regime in April. The new
constitution dilutes the presidency's wide-ranging powers has
come into effect after the referendum.
In line with the new constitution, the 120-strong
Kyrgyz parliament after October elections will appoint the
Prime Minister and the government.
Kyrgyzstan's former ambassador in Washington and
London and country's ex-Foreign Minister Otunbayeva will be
inaugurated on Saturday.
The official results of the Sunday's referendum on a
new Kyrgyz constitution were published on Friday in government
newspaper Erkin-Too, RIA Novosti reported from Bishkek.
Backed by 90.55 per cent of Kyrgyz voters the new
constitution paves the path of transition to a parliamentary
democracy in the former Soviet republic divided in the rival
clans and last month's inter-ethnic violence, in which at
least 2,000 people, mostly of Uzbek minority were feared
killed, ten times more than the official figure of 280.
Otunbayeva's predecessor, Bakiyev fled the country
after violent opposition protests in capital Bishkek on April
7 and since then has taken refuge in Belarus.
Both Russia and the US already have air bases near
the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek and the new military base in the
south of the country was part of the Kremlin's plans to offset
the growing US military presence in Central Asia.
The referendum, was the first step towards legitimacy
of the present regime, took place in the midst of inter-ethnic
violence in the southern regions of Osh and Jalalabad and
exodus of hundreds of thousand refugees to neighbouring
Uzbekistan.
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) had sent a police assessment mission to Kyrgyzstan to
help stabilise the situation in the country.
Kyrgyzstan has a population of over 5.3 million people
divided among three main groups -- the indigenous Kyrgyz, the
Russians who stayed back after the end of the Soviet Union,
and a large and concentrated Uzbek population.
President Dmitry Medvedev had cautioned that
Kyrgyzstan risks disintegration and split like Afghanistan if
the political stability is not restored through democratic
means.
PTI
First Published: Friday, July 02, 2010, 17:57