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Kyrgyzstan votes in landmark election
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Kyrgyzstan votes in landmark election
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An electoral official helps woman to cast her ballot at a polling station during parliamentary elections in the city of Osh October 10, 2010. Kyrgyzstan will vote on Sunday to create the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, in an election its interim leaders hope can unite the country only four months after the worst bloodshed in its modern history.
Credit: Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko
By Robin Paxton BISHKEK |
Sun Oct 10, 2010 2:26am EDT
By Robin Paxton BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan will vote Sunday to create the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, in an election its interim leaders hope can unite the country only four months after the worst bloodshed in its modern history.
Unique among elections in ex-Soviet Central Asia, voters have no idea which party will win the majority of seats in a new parliament and select a prime minister who will attempt to knit together a country plagued by political and ethnic divisions.
"We are electing not only a parliament, but a new system of government," President Roza Otunbayeva said in a televised address on the eve of the election. "We are turning over a new page in the history of Kyrgyzstan."
Interim leaders want the vote to empower a prime minister to restore stability in the former Soviet republic, where clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the south killed more than 400 people in June and left thousands homeless.
The United States, which operates a military air base in the country to support the war in Afghanistan, has vocally embraced the plan to create the first democracy in a region otherwise ruled by presidential strongmen with an iron grip on power.
Russia, which also has an air base in Kyrgyzstan, is an opponent of the parliamentary model, arguing it could expose the country to more violence or a power grab by Islamist militants as rival factions vie for influence.
In the southern region of Osh, epicenter of the June violence, the provincial governor said that voters could try to foment violence should their favored candidates fail to win seats in the new parliament.
Parts of the city are still in ruins, with many ethnic Uzbeks living in makeshift tents as they attempt to rebuild houses burned to the ground in the clashes. While some Uzbeks say they will reject the poll, many others say they will vote.
"Some, of course, are afraid, but they still believe in stability," said Zukhra Urushbayeva, head of the election commission in Shark, a predominantly Uzbek village in Osh region.
OBSERVERS
Otunbayeva, who came to power after a popular revolt toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev in April, has said about 800 election observers will monitor the vote nationwide. She said she believed the vote would be free from corruption and fraud.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has stationed 40 long-term observers around the country and a further 200 short-term observers arrived for the vote.
"We hope the security situation will remain stable and all voters will be able to cast their ballots across the country in a peaceful atmosphere," said Jens-Hagen Eschenbaecher, spokesman for the OSCE's election monitoring arm.
Twenty-nine parties have registered for the election, of which six are widely expected to attract a large amount of support from Kyrgyzstan's 2.8 million registered voters -- slightly more than half of the country's total population.
All 120 parliament seats will be filled through popular voting for party lists. No single party will be allotted more than 65 seats, regardless of its election result.
Among the frontrunners are the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan, led by Almazbek Atambayev, deputy to Otunbayeva in the temporary government that replaced Bakiyev, as well as the Ata Meken party led by Omurbek Tekebayev.
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