Coalition Offer Fails to Resolve Crisis

Now that an attempt to forge a coalition with the Kyrgyz opposition has failed, speeding up constitutional reform is the only option President Kurmanbek Bakiev and prime minister Almazbek Atambaev have to ease the political tension, NBCentralAsia observers say.



Most appointments in Atambaev’s new government were announced on April 2. The prime minister, who was co-head of the opposition Movement for Reforms until last week, reappointed all the heads of the security agencies and of most other ministries. New faces only appeared in the ministry for emergency situations, the health ministry and the state tax committee.



Since the two main opposition groups have refused to join the coalition, Atambaev is the lone opposition figure represented in the cabinet.



After Atambaev was voted in as prime minister on March 30, the moderate Movement for Reforms refused to join his government and instead signed up to the demands for President Bakiev’s resignation made by the more radical United Front for a Worthy Future for Kyrgyzstan.



Tamerlan Ibraimov, director of the Centre for Political and Legal Studies, says this development inhibits the new prime minister’s ability to act as mediator between the two sides.



“The composition of the new government is not what either the opposition or the people expected; it hasn’t substantially changed. Atambaev now has to find ways of holding talks and reaching a compromise with the opposition, but it is unlikely he can help reach [such] a consensus.”



Political scientist Mars Sariev says the authorities and the new prime minister have narrowed the space for dialogue by keeping the same pro-Bakiev figures in charge of the security agencies,



“The fact that the president has retained his loyalists in the security agencies shows he senses danger. But by taking that decision, he has also outraged the opposition further,” he said.



The only way to calm the storm before an open-ended opposition demonstration begins on April 11 is to accelerate the process of constitutional reform, observers say.



Ibraimov says that if the authorities are really interested in reaching an agreement, they should adopt a new constitution.



The government has not yet given its reaction to a new version of the constitution which was proposed at the end of March by member of parliament and Movement for Reforms representative Kubatbek Baibolov.



According to Begish Aamatov, a former member of parliament, Atambaev’s government may be just as bad at solving economic issues as every previous cabinet unless a new constitution comes into force.



Rosa Aknazarova, leader of the El Yntymagy party says the president has to “give the prime minister more real powers in order for the government to work efficiently”.



A much anticipated presidential decree to set up a working group on constitutional reform made up of representatives from political parties, parliament and the judiciary has not been issued yet. But at a presidential administration meeting on April 2, President Bakiev asked subordinates to speed up the process.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)