Text of report by the Kyrgyz news agency Kabar on 13th March

Bishkek, 13th March: The OSCE [observer] mission for monitoring the
elections to the Zhogorku Kenesh [Supreme Council, parliament] of
Kyrgyzstan has announced its preliminary conclusions on the results of the
second and final round of the parliamentary elections. As is noted in its
statement, certain problems which arose in the course of the first round of
the elections and to which the attention of the Kyrgyz authorities was
drawn virtually remained unresolved. In particular, international observers
described state officials' interference and the selective use of legal
sanctions against candidates as negative factors. As positive conditions
for holding honest, fair and contested elections were not created to the
full extent, the mission believes, there were cases of serious concern
arising in certain electoral districts although the elections as a whole
passed in a calm and organized fashion. Therefore, the OSCE mission for
observing the elections to the Zhogorku Kenesh reached the conclusion that
"the elections were held not in full conformity with the requirements of
the OSCE."

In the second round, more than 10 candidates were automatically declared
deputy because of their contenders' refusal to run in the elections or of
the cancellation of the latter's registration. The mission believes that
this runs counter to the spirit of the law in accordance with which one
needs to get a majority of the votes of registered electorate in order to
be elected in the first round. After the first round, nine candidates had
their registration revoked, which can be attributed to the weakness of the
process of resolving legislative disputes over the elections and their
administration. According to information from the mission, in many cases
the overall counting of results was not transparent enough. Answering
journalists' questions, the head of the missioin, Mark Stevens, noted that
it would be subjective to say that Kyrgyzstan's democratic image was
affected following the elections. "But I think these [elections] did not
improve its image. What is important is that the problems have been
detected and identified," he said. The OSCE's full report will be prepared
after the final results of the elections are published.

Source: Kabar news agency, Bishkek, in Russian 1700 gmt 13 Mar 00
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