The takedown of a once-powerful politician in Kyrgyzstan who served as mayor of Osh when that city was devastated by a wave of deadly ethnic clashes in 2010 appears to have been completed.
News website 24.kg reported that Osh city court on July 22 sentenced Melis Myrzakmatov, who is evading capture in an overseas location, to seven years in jail for abuse of office.
The case revolves around alleged financial misdemeanors involved in the construction of an elevated bridge in Osh. Prosecutors have said no cost estimates exercise were performed before tenders were issued and that the entire affair has already cost the state more than $450,000. (Myrzakmatov’s successor, Aitmamat Kadyrbaev, has pledged to complete the job and name it in honor of Russian President Vladimir Putin.)
Myrzakmatov’s current whereabouts are not known with certainty, although newspaper Vecherny Bishkek in December cited a source among the ex-mayor’s associates as saying he had taken refuge in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
Given his once untouchable status, Myrzakmatov’s downfall has been observed with some incredulity by long-term watchers of the region. He distinguished himself during the 2010 unrest for his markedly nationalistic tone, which earned him the contempt of his city’s ethnic Uzbek community and admiration from sections of the Kyrgyz population. Some believe he had a role in instigating the violence that scarred the city.
Attempts by the government to remove Myrzakmatov from power were met with open contempt. He was finally unseated in December 2013, however.
Myrzakmatov’s time as mayor effectively came to an end when then Prime Minister Jantoro Satybaldiev forced him to step down ahead of a crucial council vote to determine the city’s next mayor. In the event, some of the councilors from Myrzakmatov’s own ruling party, Uluttar Birimdigi, failed to support his candidacy—evidence, said some, of a plot hatched in Bishkek.
Myrzakmatov’s domain ostensibly extended only to the parts of the country under his own control, although it was once speculated that he might eventually develop political ambitions on the national scene as a champion of the south.
Fissures between the south and north were rudely exposed after the overthrow in April 2010 of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, a native of a village near the southern city of Jalal-Abad. The ascent to power of a political elite with its power base in the north sparked anxiety in cities like Jalal-Abad and Osh, where counterrevolutionary protests followed Bakiyev’s toppling.
Myrzakmatov’s legal problems and yesterday’s man status has not stopped one of the country’s best-known politicians and leader of the left-leaning Ata Meken party, Omurbek Tekebayev, from recently announcing an alliance.
“I don’t care about Melis Myrzakmatov’s past — what is important to us is that he is not a marionette of the current authorities,” Tekebayev said at a press conference to announce plans to merge Ata Meken with Myrzakmatov’s Uluttar Birimdigi party.
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