A GENERAL election in Kyrgyzstan this week was deeply flawed, international monitors said yesterday as preliminary results showed that Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the president of the central Asian country, had won a landslide victory.
The outcome of the poll is being closely watched by the US and Russia, which operate military bases in Kyrgyzstan and are eager to prevent the spread of instability from Afghanistan north into central Asia.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the human rights watchdog, said the conduct of the election was “disappointing”, noting incidents of ballot box stuffing, multiple voting and inaccuracies in voter lists.
Senator Consiglio Di Nino, the head of the association’s mission monitoring the poll, said the election “fell short of key standards Kyrgyzstan has committed to as a participant country of the OSCE”.
Mr Bakiyev won an 85.5 per cent majority at the election, according to preliminary results published by the Kyrgyz central election commission yesterday.
Almazbek Atambayev, the leader of the Social Democrat party, was the runner-up, winning just over 7 per cent of the vote.
The commission ordered an official investigation into opposition allegations of vote-rigging, but said the election had been “peaceful and friendly”.
Mr Atambayev, who withdrew from the presidential race citing mass irregularities on Thursday even before polling stations had closed, said the opposition would present its own tally of the vote. “From now on the authorities and the president in Kyrgyzstan are not legitimate,” he said.
Mr Atambayev defied a government ban on unsanctioned meetings on Thursday night, leading several hundred demonstrators to protest in Bishkek. He promised to organise more protests in the coming days.
Mr Bakiyev had been expected to win the election, in spite of criticism of rampant corruption and lawlessness in Kyrgyzstan. The run-up to the election was marred by a spate of brutal attacks on independent journalists. Mr Atambayev’s Social Democrat party said the election campaign was marked by “unprecedented” official harassment of the opposition.
Kyrgyzstan was viewed by the West as “an island of democracy” while Askar Akayev, the western-leaning former president, was in power. But Mr Bakiyev, accused of authoritarianism by his opponents, has turned to Moscow for support. This year he ordered the US to quit a military base in Kyrgyzstan that is a crucial transit hub for troops serving in Afghanistan after Russia offered $2 billion (€1.4 billion) in assistance.
But he later agreed to allow the base to stay open temporarily after the US agreed to triple the rent.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)