Felix Kulov wrote in an open letter that his Ar-Namys party, which campaigned in elections last month on a platform of close relations with Moscow, intended to push through its own reforms in a country housing both Russian and US military bases.
Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic lying on a major drug trafficking route out of Afghanistan, held elections last month aimed at creating the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia, a region otherwise ruled by presidential strongmen.
The Oct. 10 election was billed by international observers as an important step toward democracy, in a year that has seen a popular uprising and the worst ethnic bloodshed in Kyrgyzstan’s post-Soviet history.
But it failed to produce a clear winner in a country split by political and clan rivalries. Five parties won representation in Parliament but none has a majority of the 120 seats, prompting fierce wrangling to form a coalition government.
President Roza Otunbayeva, who has led Kyrgyzstan since the April uprising, has given her former deputy, Almazbek Atambayev, the task of building a coalition. Three failed attempts will require her to dissolve parliament and call a new election.
“There was only one reason for our refusal: the Ar-Namys party undertook a series of concrete responsibilities during the pre-election campaign and worked out a program and a plan to fulfil it, investment projects and other documents,” Kulov said. “Their realization is possible if those who devised them are directly responsible for their implementation,” he wrote in the letter to Atambayev, leader of the Social-Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan that finished second in the elections.
Ar-Namys finished third, behind the Social-Democrats and the Ata Zhurt party. A coalition of three of the five parties in the legislature will be required to form a majority.
Kyrgyzstan’s constitution, adopted after a June referendum following clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that killed more than 400 people, demands that a prime minister be elected within 15 days of the first session of parliament.
Otunbayeva has previously said the prime minister should be chosen by Nov. 27, but the date is now unclear. Although the first session of Parliament began on Nov. 10, it was adjourned and has not yet resumed. The start date for the 15-day deadline, therefore, has not yet been determined. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he was confident that Kyrgyzstan would soon be able to form an efficient government able to provide security and economic growth.
“We are ready to find new ways to provide comprehensive assistance,” Putin told reporters at a regional security meeting in neighboring Tajikistan. He did not give details.
Kulov’s refusal to join the coalition is not a surprise. His party has opposed the switch to parliamentary rule, under which the prime minister will assume more power than the president. “Kulov has understood that negotiations with him were manoeuvres and that it was better to speak first and save face,” said Mars Sariyev, an independent political analyst in Bishkek.
A more likely coalition could be forged between Atambayev’s party, fourth-placed Respublika and fifth-placed Ata Meken.
But Sariyev said Ata Meken’s leader, Omurbek Tekebayev, could be holding out for a chance to form the coalition himself. Otunbayeva has already said he would be next in line to try to form a government should Atambayev be unsuccessful.
