By Edward
First, an update from Bishkek. A friend of my partner who lives in central Bishkek said the large store on the ground floor of her apartment building was very noisily looted last night, making it very difficult to sleep, but otherwise she's fine. So are my partner's parents and siblings (they're not in the center of the town). Interestingly, among the protestors who stormed the "White House" were reportedly well-known athletes who were plied with vodka and then encouraged by the opposition leaders to beat up on the president's police. The looters are reportedly the poorer folks from the countryside, not the residents of Bishkek, which bodes well for order once things calm down and they return to their homes. As my partner noted, without a hint of irony, "I mean, who rides a horse in the capital?"
Today, Akayev is calling the uprising an "unconstitutional coup." Well, duh!!! He does seem to be suggesting he'll return to take power, but at the moment that seems unlikely as even Putin is saying he's willing to work with the new leadership.
Speaking of Putin, a story in the NYTimes today suggests he has cause to be concerned about all this, personally, I mean:
For opposition leaders and even for some of those in power in other republics, the events that began in Georgia with the toppling of Eduard A. Shevardnadze and continued with the extraordinary challenge to a fraudulent election in Ukraine last fall have come like a contagion, spreading in fast and unpredictable ways.
Nowhere is the fear and anticipation greater than in the largest and most powerful republic, Russia. There, President Vladimir V. Putin has steadily strengthened state control even as he presents himself as a democrat.
"People are tired everywhere," Aleksandr Rondeli, president of the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, said in a telephone interview from Georgia's capital, Tblisi, referring to the popular discontent. The uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine, he added, showed what was possible. "They saw how easy it looked on TV," he said.
Of course, what made things that easy in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan is the fact they were more democratic to start with. The more totalitarian former Soviet republics (think Turkmenistan, Belarus, Uzbekistan, etc.) are less in danger, at least from relatively peaceful revolutions:
Andranink M. Migranyan, a professor and political scientist at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, said challenges to power in former Soviet republics depended in large degree on the willingness of the authorities to use force.
Consistently, he said, the leaders who have at least nominally presented themselves as democrats have proved unable to preserve themselves through democratic means.
Unless a major crackdown scares folks back into submission across the region, the big conflict may come when Putin's current (and constitutionally final) term is up:
Not coincidentally, perhaps, rumors have swirled in Russia about Mr. Putin's own political future in the wake of the recent upheavals in the former Soviet neighborhood. Mr. Putin was re-elected to a second and, according to the Constitution, final, term as president last year.
Despite his repeated assertions to the contrary, commentators have speculated that the Kremlin is considering ways he may yet remain in power after 2008.
At the same time, voices of opposition have emerged. Garry Kasparov, the chess champion, resigned from the game to devote himself to ensuring that Mr. Putin does not run again. Mikhail A. Kasyanov, the former prime minister under Mr. Putin, emerged publicly to say he was prepared to support the opposition, which remains in disarray but may yet find its cause.
Of course we saw how effective celebrity voices were in unseating the powers that be here in the US just last year, so this may be little more than a minor footnote in Russian history, but events in Kyrgyzstan are likely to make those less willing to be chased from their presidential palaces tighten the screws even more in the coming months.
Edward,
Thank you for update.
Posted by: mky | March 25, 2005 at 01:33 PM
no problem mky...it's fascinating to watch how quickly it's all changing...again, the Registan blog is doing an extraordinary job of staying on top of it all.
Posted by: Edward | March 25, 2005 at 01:55 PM
I just love what you guys do, always something new, always fresh, a great community, not the same old McKRAP tm. Can I say McKRAP? Thanks for adding much to my day everyday And yeah, I think Putin has something to worry about too. Wish I could say the same thing about Boyo Arbusto: Bush Junior.
Posted by: The Heretik | March 25, 2005 at 08:07 PM
It's happening in fits and starts, but the democranami is still going strong.
Posted by: Charles Bird | March 25, 2005 at 10:16 PM
Charles, while I'm also heartened by the way democracy is spreading, can I say that democranami is well, this sums it up best: Groan.
A tsunami is a terrible thing leaving death and destruction in its wake...can't a better term be found for democracy's spread? Something nice, spreadable, and appetizing...like demargarine, or democream cheese, or I Can't Believe It's not Tyranny. ;-)
Posted by: Edward | March 26, 2005 at 10:36 AM