NEW INTERNATIONALIST
In November 2011 I visited Kyrgyzstan during the final stages of campaigning for the presidential election. While the 16 candidates smiled and spoke hopefully of the bright future they offered their country, I struggled to find old friends and acquaintances. Many had left the country or had migrated to the capital city to escape grinding poverty, lack of opportunity, instability and ethnic discrimination.
The following month, Almaz Atambaev was sworn in as the new president. Remarkably, this was the first time that any of the Central Asian republics had witnessed a peaceful and constitutional handover of power since their independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. But if Atambaev is going to address some of the country’s most serious problems, he is going to need a lot more than the good will of international donors that his election victory has bought him.
Kyrgyzstan was among the poorest of the former Soviet republics. Its predominantly agricultural economy was decimated by the loss of the Soviet centrally planned market. Its first president, Askar Akaev, was alone in the region in taking the neoliberal and democratic development path. This exacerbated the basic problem of poverty, and when he backtracked on democratic commitments and tried to pursue an unconstitutional third term of office, he was overthrown by largely peaceful protests in 2005.
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