Volatile Kyrgyzstan suspended campaigning on Saturday for a cooling-off day ahead of the first presidential election since last year's bloody revolution and deadly ethnic violence. If the Sunday poll is successful, it will mark the first peaceful transition of power in Kyrgyzstan's 20-year independent history, as well as in the entire Central Asian region largely controlled by strongmen.
A key issue in the Sunday poll will be whether incumbent Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev will muster more than 50 percent of the votes to avoid the second round, as initial polls suggest. The moderate prime minister faces challenges by two Kyrgyz nationalists.
A win by either Kachimbek Tashiyev of the Ata Zhurt party or ex-parliament speaker Adakhan Madumarov would be a disappointment for the West, which relies on Kyrgyzstan for some of its anti-Taliban operations in Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan banned all campaigning and publication of polls from Saturday morning for a "day of silence" to allow voters to make up their minds, although billboards still promoted candidates in the capital Bishkek, which was overcast and cold.
Voters in Bishkek, Atambayev's stronghold, told AFP they had already made up their minds. "I'll vote for Atambayev myself. There's no one else. He's the most on-the-ball and speaks Russian well," said an ethnic Russian taxi driver who gave his name only as Vladimir.
"I'll vote for Atambayev. He's a businessman himself and knows our problems and solves them as well as he can," said Artur, 49, an ethnic Tatar owner of a car parts store. But lawyer Ashim Abdykarov, 57, disagreed. "There is no one decent on the list. Today we need a harsh, authoritarian person. And Atambayev is a doormat. Even if he gets elected, I don't think he will last long, maybe a year and a half at the most. He can't lead the country. He is too weak."
Tashiyev, a former boxer, draws his support from the divided south, where almost 500 people died last June in ethnic clashes between Kyrgyz and ethnic Uzbeks that forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. Both Tashiyev and Madumarov have warned of mass protests if the elections are judged to be fraudulent.
Madumarov told AFP he would organise protest rallies in the case of fraud, while Tashiyev told a news conference on Friday that "millions" would rise up if the elections were seen as unfair. Interim President Roza Otunbayeva, a former diplomat who led the uprising that toppled the Kyrgyz nationalist Kurmanbek Bakiyev from power in April 2010, is not allowed to stand in Sunday's race but is a close ally of Atambayev.
Underscoring the importance of the elections in a televised address on Friday, she warned candidates against inciting "illegal acts that destroy stability." "I will regard this as acts against our statehood," she said, calling the peaceful transfer of power through elections a matter of "paramount significance" for Kyrgyzstan.
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