Report: Kyrgyzstan President Flees Capital

Associated Press via Yahoo! News ^ | 2005 Mar 24 | Steve Gutterman

[Wiz]

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - President Askar Akayev and his family left Kyrgyzstan's capital by helicopter Thursday evening, the Interfax news agency reported, hours after protesters seized government headquarters in Bishkek and claimed control of state broadcasting facilities.

The report, which cited unspecified sources and could not immediately be confirmed, said the helicopter was headed toward Kazakhstan.

During the takeover, about 1,000 protesters cleared riot police from their positions outside the fence protecting the building, and about half entered through the front. Others smashed windows with stones, tossed papers and tore portraits of Akayev in half and stomped on them.

[lizol]

Noooo kidding!? To Russia? Why? (sarcasm)

[lizol]

it's also important to make sure that Islamist radicals do not use the period of transition and uncertainty to wreck the havoc

This is an actual threat in this mess ancd chaos.

[sergey1973]

I hope it definitely won't happen, but I always argue on the side of caution.

[lizol]

Islamists See Opening in C. Asia Chaos

[F14 Pilot]

I am very sure that the Mullahs in Iran have already blocked Iranian views to see what happened in lebanon and Central Asia.

[sergey1973]

Well--let's see how the situations develop and Pray/Meditate/Concentrate that Islamists won't be allowed to run the country. Corrupt Authocratic Regimes are certainly bad, but no rational person wants to replace one bad regime with something worse. I certainly hope it won't be the case.

[dfwgator]

More like another case of "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

[sergey1973]

In some cases, the new boss can be far worse than the old one-:))) Well--I believe it won't be the case for Kyrgyzstan, but I'm watching it with caution.

[Lukasz]

Kwasniewski will be the next one :-)

[lizol]

And also eastwards.

[sergey1973]

Why Kwasniewski -:))) ? You still can vote him out of office peacefully in Poland--don't you ? -:))) Or Poland got tired of not having any revolution for the last 15 years or so-:))) ? I'm actually imagining already that something like "Orange Revolution" sweeping Russia and Belarus (daydreaming, hallucinating or seeing the future)-:)))

I'm not an idealist who thinks that all the social ills will be solved with the removal of Putin and Lukashenko and their replacement (hopefully) with more or less decent regimes, but having someone like them in power certainly does not make this world safer and better place.

[lizol]

Of course it was just a joke with Kwasniewski (at least in my opinion, I don't know about Lukasz, but I think his is the same). He just finshes his last term this fall, so he'll be out (finally!!!). When he is - he can have some serious problems with explaining many things considering his presidency (he won't be protected by any immunity anymore).

[Lukasz]

Why Kwasniewski -:))) ? You still can vote him out of office peacefully in Poland--don't you ? -:))) Or Poland got tired of not having any revolution for the last 15 years or so-:))) ? I'm actually imagining already that something like "Orange Revolution" sweeping Russia and Belarus (daydreaming, hallucinating or seeing the future)-:)))

Yes we are really bored here, we cheered for Georgia, Ukraine and now Kyrgyzstan but it is not the same…. :-) Kwasniewski was a president twice, according to Polish constitution you cannot be a president more than twice. I also hope for peaceful revolutions in Belarus and Russia, I think that especially Lukashenko’s time is coming to the end.

I'm not an idealist who thinks that all the social ills will be solved with the removal of Putin and Lukashenko and their replacement (hopefully) with more or less decent regimes, but having someone like them in power certainly does not make this world safer and better place.

Of course not, the best example is Poland :) But it would be a good start, Rome wasn’t built in one day.

[Grzegorz 246]

"Why Kwasniewski -:))) "

Because traitors should be punished !

[sergey1973]

Sure, I understand it was a joke -:))) I realized you folks got tired of Kwasniewski, so you want if not a revolution but something that would give you a feeling of that -:)))) However, can you enlighten me just a little bit what Kwasniewski did wrong ? Grzegorz even calls him a "traitor". What he has done ? Sorry--sometimes I'm too slow to get the jokes (if it is a joke).

I never heard anything either bad or good about him. In my impression (which could be wrong of course), he is just an average political leader. OK--he was a Poland Communist functionary but so were a number of other Eastern Europe Politicians who now successfully function in democratic framework. Is he corrupt beyond the pale ?

[lizol]

I think this is a pretty good article considering issues about Kwasniewski you're interested in:

Kwasniewski Clams Up

or another one:

Presidential No-Show

[sergey1973]

Thanks lizol--these dark privatizaton deals were "difficulties in transition to market-oriented economy"--another euphemism to downplay the actual financial crimes that have been committed in former Socialist block after collapse of communism with direct participation of top officials. However, it wasn't as bad in Poland as it was in Russia. In Russia, the Privatization was so gross and criminal, that it would put to shame any other scandals including Polish one (nothing to be proud of course, but that's the fact) . Actually there was an attempt on life of the privatization architect Anatoly Chubais. I had a posting on this too on the Free Republic.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1367450/posts