Energy issues, specifically major price hikes for utilities, proved the undoing of Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s administration in Kyrgyzstan. The provisional government now in power in Bishkek has to take care to avoid the same pitfall.
Inter-ethnic tension has spiked in Kyrgyzstan’s southern capital Osh, which is home to a large ethnic Uzbek minority. The lack of Uzbek representation in government agencies and law-enforcement bodies is the main source of discontent.
Kyrgyzstan in the post-Soviet era has not had a president who has served out his elective term. A commission appointed by Kyrgyzstan’s provisional government has prepared a new constitutional blueprint that seeks to rebalance the distribution of powers, and, hopefully, provide for a greater measure of political stability than the Central Asian nation has known in its recent past.
Kyrgyzstan’s General Prosecutor’s Office is focusing its corruption investigation concerning fuel supplies at Manas Transit Center on companies allegedly controlled by Maxim Bakiyev, the son of ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
Top officials at the State Department in Washington are said to be "fuming" with US Embassy personnel in Bishkek for supposedly failing to maintain strong ties with erstwhile opposition politicians who now are leading figures in the Kyrgyz provisional government.
