A couple of weeks ago, opposition MP Tursunbai Bakir uluu wrote an open letter to Almas Atambayev, victor of Kyrgyzstan’s recent presidential race. Today Atambayev was inaugurated, becoming Kyrgyzstan’s fourth head of state in twenty years, and the first to whom power was handed over voluntarily. While the vote was accepted as relatively free and fair by international organizations, Atambayev’s opponents (of whom Bakir uluu was one) complained loudly of foul play. In an obtuse, lyrical correspondance, Bakir uluu reminded Atambayev that many knights who slay dragons actually become dragons themselves when they are unable to resist the gold in the dragon’s cave (smell a metaphor?) adding that he hoped this didn’t happen to Atambayev.

Today, to show appreciation for this zany lawmaker’s love of fairy tales, and also to offer my best wishes to President 4.0, a short poem:

Almas, Almas, in power at last!
The vote was rigged, the dye was cast,
The shyrdak came out royal blue,
Your rivals said it wasn’t true,
But who are they, and who are you?

Yet these are pains for other days,
When bells will toll and troubles weigh,
When second wives will make demands,
And younger sons will tie your hands,
For now you are the man – the man!

Bakir uluu’s rambles in full: http://eng.24.kg/politic/2011/11/15/21515.html?print=yes

Profile of Atambayev

Disassociation: It happens when you have spent too long in one place to remember home in the same way you used to, but not a long enough time to call the new place home.

It happens when the gold-toothed women at the bazaar who shamelessly inflate the price of roundels of bread as you walk past them (20,25,30) make more sense to you than the homogenous conglomerates that captured the high streets in the country where you were raised.

It happens when you know more about the politicians in your adopted state than the ones in your own, without having developed any greater or lesser affection for either.

It happens when the fortunes of a football team that once consumed you register only as a weekly curiosity, and you begin to take a vague interest in another league; full of cash-strapped teams that are subsidiaries to breweries, sausage factories and chemical works. You enjoy the ironies, the football itself is shit to watch.

It happens when the inevitable anti-climax of Christmas in a country that doesn’t celebrate it, cut off from people that do, is eclipsed by the anticipation of the banya on the following day.

**************

In my second year in Kyrgyzstan I ran out of money, and had to downgrade my lifestyle. I moved in with a friend of mine, Narzira, and a man named Turdali and his wife. Turdali was a hunter from the mountainous province of Naryn, but financial realities had shoehorned him into construction work in the city in the winter.

The first week we lived together, Turdali was a strict Muslim. He threw a hunk of ham I had put in the fridge out of the window, and relayed Koranic wisdom to me in heavily accented Russian. During the twilight years of the Soviet Union he had been the leader of a branch of the Communist Youth at a gold mine in northern Kyrgyzstan. He was still a commanding personality.

Yet at some point in the passage of time, Turdali had fallen, and his much younger and better-educated wife had taken the plunge with him. I came to learn that his bursts of religious fervour were offset by longer periods of alcoholism and depression. Drink made him an unstoppable tyrant.

His star sign was Leo, he told me, and the lion in him was ferocious. On evenings he would roar into my room and compel me to join him in vodka-fuelled revelry. If I refused, he would grow manipulative, and then, physically threatening.

Sometimes, fearing for his wife’s safety, I would take him out. Then we would go on ‘kiosk runs’. In Kyrgyzstan, where not everybody can buy a whole bottle of vodka, you can order shots in small, portable shops made of tin, and pay for as much of the bottle as you can drink. The stallholders await payment nervously, the atmosphere is one of stewing tension and maudlin poverty.

After the runs, I would help Turdali’s wife put him to bed. He was short, but barrel-figured, and it made difficult work, like rolling a beached whale back into the sea. When the construction firm that employed him, a Kazakh outfit, lost its skin in the financial crisis, he began drinking in the mornings too.

Commando-crawling along the floor, he would wrap his arms around my ankles and implore me to join him for ‘fifty grams’ of vodka before I left the flat. One day, when he was home alone, he got so drunk that he bought a sheep’s head from the bazaar, set it to boil, and promptly passed out. For the next five days the flat wreaked of burnt mutton, and we ate sheep’s brain on toast with vodka for breakfast.

Happily, about a month later, I found a new job that allowed me to move out of the flat. Simultaneously, Turdali stabilized, and went back to preaching a fusion of nomadic and Koranic proverbs to anyone who would listen, setting up a business importing scrap metal from China as well. I wished him and his wife luck as I went on my way, but feared what the future might hold for them.

When you are living abroad, periods like this, however short they actually are, can appear terminal. They become part of your emotional baggage, in the same way that a crappy contract or a problematic relationship with a family member might back home.

*****************
26.12.10

The smell of burning wood fills the wash house, sharpened by a rush of eucalyptus. The temperature in the steam room rises, 75, 80, 85. Sweat pours off you. This is how the new week always starts: With a washing away of the old.

The man that built this banya died in it. It was his birthday, and he dehydrated after celebrating with friends. Sometimes the heat is unbearable; it toasts your face and stings your toes.

Stripped in a turban, my bathing partner looks like a beauty from some bygone Byzantine court, captured in the abstraction of a master artist’s frieze. Amidst the thickening steam, our conversation ceases. Bodies become weak. Civilizations clash over a saucepan of cold tea.

A length of hemp cloth rubs our soap-soaked skin red, and pristine. Now all that remains is to rinse off with chill water. Of all the human rituals I have encountered this is the best. When it is finished, we go back to the house and collapse, refreshed, lethargic and content.

If the results of the October 10 parliamentary elections were a slap in the face for many northerners, injury has been added to insult on the football field as Neftchi, a club based in the southern region of Jalal-Abad, caused an upset by claiming the Kyrgyz national championship for the first time in their history.

In recent times, the country’s upper league has been dominated mainly by northern clubs, specifically Bishkek-based Dordoi Dynamo, a subsidiary of the firm that runs Dordoi market, Central Asia’s largest bazaar. Backed by the financial might of owner Askar Salimbekov, the team had claimed all of the previous six national titles. For head coach Sergei Dvoryanko, defeat was hard to take.

Addressing journalists at a post-season press conference, Dvoryanko made reference to some of the difficulties he felt his team faced when playing games in the South:

“As a result of luck and fortune the team [Neftchi] took first place. Last year it did not exist at all. [The team] came together just before the start of the championship. Plus, you know the conditions in the South, and what it is like to play there. Without that, and with normal refereeing, Neftchi would not have become champions.”

Whilst the Spektator has been reserving most of its limited sympathy for Omurbek Tekebayev, the fallen angel in the 2010 parliamentary election race, spare a thought for Butun Kyrgyzstan, who came agonizingly close to entry into the Jogorku Kenesh parliament and are now taking their grievances onto the street.

By one interpretation, which doesn’t include additional voter lists, Buton should have passed into the parliament having received more than the 5% threshold. When the additional voter lists (always controversial in Kyrgyz elections) were included they had just over 4.8% of the vote: close but no cigar.

For those interested in what Butun would have stood for if given the chance, a garbled translation of their manifesto pledge can be found here.

Butun were seen by many as “Ata Jurt plus”, the only party bar the victors with a predominantly southern base, and thought of as being even more nationalistic than their more celebritous rivals. The lack of other regional options in Kyrgyzstan’s most densely populated oblasts – Osh and Jalal-abad – was one of the major reasons for the Jurt’s victory. In the North, parties with similar constituencies stole votes off one another and diluted their respective chances of overall victory, and, in the case of Ak-Shumkar (White Falcon), entry into the parliament.

Photo: Ulugbek Akishev for Kloop.kg

To check out the latest issue of the Spektator, visit www.thespektator.co.uk. If you have an issue you feel strongly about or would like to write about please email: editor@thespektator.co.uk

A recent website launch held in Bishkek’s Park Hotel threw up some interesting observations about politics in Kyrgyzstan. Offered by Dutch environmental NGO Milieu Kontakt international, the aim of the event was to acquaint local journalists and civil society representatives with www.vybirai.org, a resource that allows voters in the country to compare the manifesto promises of the various political parties contesting the 2010 parliamentary elections.

According to Wouter Pronk, the project‘s senior manager, the site was modelled on previous Milieu Kontakt initiatives that allowed voters to make the greenest possible polling choices by contrasting the environmental policies of political parties in European countries. Vybirai.org differs in the respect that its focus is on all aspects of a given party’s campaign pledge, from education and the economy right through to foreign policy orientation.

The launch earned a mixed reception. One journalist complained that the site had been translated into Uzbek, the country’s third most popularly spoken language, as it showed “political insensitivity” following recent events. “There are only two languages in Kyrgyzstan – Kyrgyz is the state language and Russian is the official language,” he lectured Pronk.

Defending the project, Pronk explained that the decision to include Uzbek had been made due to the significant proportion of the country for whom it was a first language.

Manas Aijikitov of regional video portal Stan-TV was more congratulatory. “I just want to say that as a voter, I support this initiative. Everywhere around town we see faces and slogans, but no information! At last we have a way of comparing what parties have actually promised to do!” he rejoiced.

Another observer, Aida Kurbanova, from the Association of Civil Society Support Centres, offered constructive criticism. Whilst praising the site in switching the focus from personalities to policies, Kurbanova said it hadn’t gone far enough. “Instead of general headings like ‘culture’ and ‘the economy’ we should be trying to find out parties’ positions on specific issues relevant to our political society,” she suggested. A man sitting next to her claimed that a site evaluating the extent to which campaign promises were realistic might have been a better idea.

Pronk admitted there were faults with the initiative but said that Mileu Kontakt and their partner organizations had “proceeded from the assumption that parties take their manifesto promises seriously,” a comment that produced a ripple of cynical laughter amongst the assembled.

For those with a greater interest in the glamour of international diplomacy than in how exactly Kaganat intend to pay for a ‘doubling in salary for all types of educators’, Ata Jurt’s programme makes interesting reading. Tipped as one of the stronger parties ahead of the vote on October 10, they wish to ‘solve positively jointly with the Russian leadership the question of establishment of a military base (training center) in the south of country within the framework of CSTO’ and ‘raise the issue of the location of the US Transit Centre in the territory of country at a nationwide referendum.’

Пресс Релиз

bmi, British Midland International и diesel.elcat.kg начинают конкурс фотографий “Огромный мир путешествий”

Бишкек, Кыргызстан, 7 Сентября, – Авиакомпания bmi, British Midland International совместно с вебресурсом diesel.elcat.kg, начинает конкурс фотографий “Огромный мир путешествий”, который предоставляет участникам конкурса шанс выиграть один авиабилет в Лондон – город, фотографии которого являются самыми популярными в мире после Нью-Йорка.

Для многих Лондон – это прекрасное место, виды и достопримечательности которого можно фотографировать бесконечно. В 2009 году Факультетом информатики Корнелльского университета в Нью-Йорке было проведено исследование Mapping the World’s Photos, проведенное на основе анализа 35 миллионов фотоизображений, размещенных на Flickr с привязкой к географическим координатам. Согласно полученным результатам, Трафальгарская площадь, Галерея Тейт, Биг-Бен и “London Eye” входят в число семи самых популярных в мире мест для фотографирования.

Комментируя конкурс, Менеджер по продажам авиакомпании bmi, British Midland International в Кыргызстане, Венера Адигамова, сказала, “ Авиакомпания bmi, British Midland International дарит уникальный шанс каждому жителю Кыргызстана, любящему путешествия и отдых, и достигшему 18го возраста, выиграть билет в Лондон.

Прикоснуться к многовековым традициям, увидеть своими глазами – королевские дворцы, фамильные замки с привидениями, старинные университеты, знаменитые английские пабы, а также убедиться в гостеприимности англичан, можно и нужно в главном культурном и деловом центре планеты, столице Великобритании – Лондоне”.

Чтобы принять участие в конкурсе, участники должны предоставить лучший снимок, который был сделан во время одного из своих путешествий. Победитель конкурса будет вознагражден билетом эконом-класса в Лондон, во время которого он cможет cделать интересные снимки удивительных мест британской столицы.

Условия участия на конкурсе:
К участию в фотоконкурсе “Огромный мир путешествий” допускаются лица, достигшие 18 лет. Каждый из участников может предоставить несколько фотографий. На предоставленных изображениях должны быть запечатлены эпизоды путешествий по Кыргызстану или за его пределами.

Конкурс проходит со 2 по 26 сентября 2010 года. Фотографии, предоставленные после 18:00 26 сентября 2010, не будут допущены к участию. Победитель будет объявлен 15 октября 2010 года.

Участникам необходимо зарегистрироваться на www.diesel.elcat.kg (регистрация бесплатная) и загрузить фотографии на разделе Фотогалерея. КГ. Размер каждой из фотографий не должен превышать 300 кб. Участникам необходимо снабдить фотоизображения коротким комментарием с информацией о том, где, когда и при каких обстоятельствах они были сделаны.

Посетители www.diesel.elcat.kg смогут оставлять свои отзывы и голосовать за понравившиеся фотографии.

Изображения, получившие наибольшее количество голосов и положительных отзывов, будут рассмотрены жюри, состоящим из сотрудников местного представительства авиакомпании bmi. Жюри назовет фотографии, занявшие первое, второе и третье места.

Победитель конкурса получит авиабилет эконом класса в Лондон и обратно. Все аэропортовые сборы оплачивает авиакомпания bmi. Тем не менее, bmi не несет ответственности за выдачу и стоимость визы. Билет не подлежит обмену, не может быть передан другому лицу или выдан в виде денежной компенсации.

После бронирования дата и время полета не могут быть изменены. Бронирование билета должно быть сделано минимум за 14 дней до путешествия. Предложение действительно при наличии мест и не гарантирует бронирование на определенную дату. Путешествие не может быть осуществлено в июле и августе, а также в периоды высокого сезона. 26 сентября 2011 года истекает срок действия подарочного сертификата. Действуют общие правила авиакомпании bmi по перевозке и приему багажа. Прочие условия и положения остаются в силе.

Участники, занявшие второе и третье места, получат памятные подарки от bmi.

Для дополнительной информации, пожалуйста, свяжитесь:

Элира Турдубаева, Action Global Communications, Кыргызстан
Моб: 700 093097
elira.t@actionprgroup.com

- Конец пресс релиза-

Для дополнительной информации, пожалуйста, свяжитесь:

Элира Турдубаева, Action Global Communications, Кыргызстан
Моб: 700 093097
elira.t@actionprgroup.com

редакторам:

British Midland International (bmi) является второй по величине авиакомпанией в Хитроу, Лондон, одном из крупнейших в мире узловых международных аэропортов. По международной сети маршрутов bmi выполняет рейсы в Абердин, Адис Абеба, Алматы, Амман, Баку, Бейрут, Белфаст Сити, Берлин, Бишкек, Каир, Дамаск, Даммам, Дублин, Эдинбург, Фритаун, Глазго, Ганновер, Джедда, Хатурм, Лондон Хитроу, Манчестер, Москва Домодедово, Рияд, Тбилиси, Тегеран, Вена, Ереван.

bmi Regional выполняет рейсы в Абердин, Бирмингем, Брюссель, Копенгаген, Ист Мидлэндз, Эдинбург, Эсбьерг, Глазго, Гронинген, Лидз Брэдфорд, Лион, Манчестер, Норвич, Цюрих.

bmi является членом Star Alliance, основанном в 1997 поистине глобального альянса, предлагающего международным пассажирам перелеты практически в любой аэропорт мира и безупречное обслуживание. Его значимость в индустрии была отмечена многочисленными наградами, включая Air Transport World Market Leadership Award, Best Airline Alliance от Business Traveller Magazine и Skytrax. Авиапартнерами по альянсу авляются: Adria Airways, Aegean Airlines, Air Canada, Air China, Air New Zealand, ANA, Asiana Airlines, Austrian, Blue1, bmi, Brussels Airlines, Continental Airlines, Croatia Airlines, EGYPTAIR, LOT Polish Airlines, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Singapore Airlines, South African Airways, Spanair, SWISS, TAM Airlines, TAP Portugal, Turkish Airlines, THAI, United и US Airways. Air India была объявлена кандидатом на вступление в альянс. В общей сложности Star Alliance выполняет 21,200 рейсов в день, между 1172 аэропортами в 181 странах.

I am sitting in a Pinta storeroom surrounded by steel kegs alternately labelled ‘Arpa‘, ‘Karagandinskoye’ and ’Shimkent‘. They are the freshly preserved barrels of ammunition behind the draught beer revolution currently sweeping Bishkek. Opposite me one of its chief architects, 30 year old director Azamat, is bright and convivial. “I haven’t drunk beer for a long time,” he says, smiling ironically as he unscrews a plastic bottle of ‘Kellers’ and pours us a drink.

Our photographer and I briefly imagine lives as beer shop owners; weeks and months lost to ale guzzling revelry followed by the inevitable, blundering descent into alcoholism and financial ruin.

But that isn’t Azamat‘s style, and it isn‘t Pinta‘s either. Instead, his company is governed by a relentless commitment to providing its expanding herd of customers with high quality draught beer in squeezy plastic bottles.

.
If a keg runs an hour over its use by date it is thrown out, stores are chemically cleaned once a week, any customer who returns with a complaint is refunded without enquiry or hesitation. Beer is bought in the shop, but drunk at home.

When I express surprise at how much better the ‘Arpa’ sold in his shops tastes in comparison to the sort served in cafes, he nods and frowns, as if slightly shamed by his compatriots shabby treatment of the nation’s leading beer.

“This,” he says, patting the keg on the head affectionately, “goes off in a week. But people keep it longer of course. When you are sold Arpa that is a few weeks old, it’s already not Arpa. More so than wine and vodka, beer is..,“ he settles on a word, “Delicate. It demands constant care and attention.”

I pester him with questions about longevity and ingredients, questions he answers with occasional reference to the other company directors, who are now sitting around the table with us, chowing down calamari flakes and chalk-textured cheese balls while supping ‘Zhivoi‘.

“Which beer lasts longest?” our photographer asks. “That,” he answers, pointing a disparaging finger at a keg containing Russian brew ‘Baltika‘. “As a result of the chemicals.” “Mocha,” adds his partner Shukrad with a scowl. Piss.

We exchange rapid-fire stories of undeserved ‘Baltika’ headaches, bemoan the absence of quality dark ale in Bishkek and talk strategy. Shukrad is keen to get my foreigner’s take on the trademarked, squeezy plastic bottles they sell their beer in. “Hygienic,“ I substantiate. “And well designed.” He makes a note.

There is nothing accidental about the company’s rise from a blueprint based on a Russian business model, to a chain with seven stores tactically positioned across the city and its suburbs. Everything from the company mission down to the minutiae of day to day operations has been planned with Napoleonic vigour.

What is remarkable is that it has all happened in the space of eleven months.

“We started with a single store in the ninth micro-region selling only Arpa,” Azamat says. “Just to test the market. Beer isn’t so popular in Kyrgyzstan and people prefer vodka, because of the soviet legacy. But I believe that now there is an increasing tendency towards softer alcoholic drinks. People are gradually coming round to beer.”

Naturally, the disadvantage of overnight success is having to compete with a yet quicker impetus towards imitation – Pinta’s growth has been shadowed by a flurry of copycat businesses also selling draught beer to take away.

“Competition is good for the growth of the market,” he affirms fearlessly. “We are confident in ourselves.” Soon we move onto our fourth and fifth bottles, toasting across the gamut of Bishkek-brewed beers, our interview losing its formal structure and dissolving into an international appreciation of barley, hops and yeast ferment.

Yet I am nagged by the idea that Pinta’s revolution could be hijacked by brasher, less careful rivals. I tipsily suggest locations for potential eighth and ninth Pintas, and moot the idea of a brewery or restaurant. But the men of Pinta don’t share my misplaced urgencies. “Seven is a manageable number. Of course we can grow further but you have to keep to the quality. With beer,” Azamat stresses, “quality is everything.”

I drained my glass and tasted reassurance. Refreshing sentiments indeed.

To check out our news feed, or the latest issue of the Spektator, visit www.thespektator.co.uk. If you have an issue you feel strongly about or would like to write about please email: editor@thespektator.co.uk

Energy bills may be falling but difficult questions concerning inadequate infrastructure remain.

Uzbekistan has now achieved the capability of supplying its own energy on its own grid, allowing President Karimov to back out of the Central Asian power grid.

Worryingly, an Uzbek withdrawal could leave Osh and Batken oblasts, whose electric is channelled through an Uzbek substation, in the dark.

In Bishkek, civil society bodies have been exerting strong pressure on the new government, securing their choice of Elections Committee Chairman and getting more candidates on the board than the political parties.

The state TV and Radio KTR fortress is hurriedly changing its name to OTRK (Public TV and Radio). The key question is who will get on the Supervisory Board that controls OTRK’s management, and if they will have the guts to keep politicians sticky fingers out of the cookie box.

The interim government has mended the doors and windows of the Jogorku Kenesh, but chaos continues. Professional-looking Russian Kalashnikov-wielding guards in the service of Minister Atambayev were outside, while the government’s official guards were wearing trainers and seemed to have been recruited from a local judo club.

Inside, a circus of chancers with business proposals have been rubbing shoulders with international envoys, whilst NGOs say the government will need management consultants just to keep effective schedules.

American Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Tatiana Gfoeller, has been scolded by the US State Department who claim she had not made enough effort to foster contacts with the opposition during Bakiev’s reign – this of course was likely a conscious decision to keep feathers unruffled and preserve the lease on Manas.

Ex-President Akayev could soon be strolling the streets of Bishkek again after the Interim-Government hinted it would not be impossible for him to return. His politically ambitious daughter has already been spotted in town.

Finally, May 17 is being whispered as the date for a counter-revolution demonstration, although nobody is holding their breath…

To check out our news feed, or the latest issue of the Spektator, visit www.thespektator.co.uk. If you have an issue you feel strongly about or would like to write about please email: editor@thespektator.co.uk

The mood was one of disbelief, excitement and freedom. There was a small but friendly chaos in the air and it was infectious. The few hundred strong crowd at the front door left no room for us to push through, so we scouted the perimeter for alternatives. Around the back I lifted myself up to a smashed window at shoulder level. I stood on the sill, lifting my American friend and then about five other Kyrgyz students into a ransacked office. The students immediately began arguing among themselves for the right to possess a Kygryz flag that lay in the room, while we stepped past them into a pitch black corridor.

“Together, okay?” I said to her, she nodded silently. The first few moments were dubious. We could see light at one end of the corridor and decided to head towards it, but what had we just walked into? Who would burst out of the rooms ahead? What were they doing in there? How would we be received? The crowd had seemed peaceful enough, but from our experience the day before we’d learnt moods shift unpredictably and angry momentum travels fast. The first room we stepped past was smashed; the door off the hinge, tables, shelves and safes over turned, books and documents scattered; then the next and the next. Even the doors to the toilets and storage rooms had been kicked in – nothing left unrevolutionised.

A giant safe was flipped over in one room with a hat rack still jammed in it, the door of the safe half bent off its hinges. We came into the light and looked down from a walkway into a foyer area. And again, the tools of burecracy; computers, chairs, books and documents were scattered, thrown into celebratory heaps like wedding confetti. It was being swept into piles by a coat rack and flag pole and we were shouted at to get away. We kept going. People were walking everywhere and most looked fresh, as if they’d slept and just come into the centre first thing, as we had.

Students, young women in heels and with hand bags, and old men in kalpaks men were roaming through in pairs or small groups with mouths agape, taking pictures with mobile phones and sifting through revolution debris for trophies. Ocassionally someone rough would pass; eyes sunken, their presence ruffled and a hard and distant ‘Don’t fuck with me’ glare. These were the men who’d lost friends and fought through the night to take the country. They were heroes now, in that parliament building, ‘nastoyarshii zhiggiti,’ men of authority and experience, and on the lips of future generations, also men of myth.

No one challenged them now.

We walked past some toppled pot plants to a window, soil spread out across the carpet beneath it. Outside in the grounds people were doing the same; inspecting the aftermath, rifling for souveneirs and trying to piece together the night’s events. A boy walked across the parking lot with a hard drive and men looked under the bonnet of a burnt out vehicle. We headed upwards. Past the government canteen and more ransacked offices to find ourselves in the government barbers; the mirror smashed, hair and shavers all over the floor.

In offices we picked up books and personal diaries belonging to disappeared staff, traipsed through piles of papers to inspect every corner and see what had been demolished around the next one. People flowed in and out of every room; some people still turning things over, but mostly now for fun and love of treasure hunting. All portraits of Bakiyev had been torn from the walls and ripped to shreds. One man sat at an official’s desk, vigorously polishing his shoes.

There was a frat party feel, as if someone’s parents had gone away and inquisitive kids roamed free through a once forbidden adult world.

People everywhere were smiling, in awe and overcome by where they stood – inside the main and biggest building in their country, a prided place where normally only the untouchable elite were allowed to tread – in only 24hours it had been overturned, now theirs, a peoples parliament. There was a feeling of common ownership, a right to take whatever they could, whatever they wanted, compensation from a stifling government .

There was a piercing sense of raw social change – a beautifully poetic chaos. When you caught eye contact with someone there was an unspoken understanding that all of us, those who’d been involved in the fighting and those who hadn’t, were living an historic moment, breathing a cultural milestone at that very point – it hadn’t happened last week and wasn’t going to happen again tomorrow, it was exactly then and there, the adrenaline of social change still charging – as if a Central Asian Berlin Wall had toppled over night and we’d all just fallen through it onto free rubble.

We kept upwards, trawling every floor. The entrances to the last two floors were blocked by guys with metal and wooden poles. These men had been there all night, the wear on their faces unbreachable. ‘There’s already too many people on this floor’ said one. Out of respect and probably fear, no one was arguing and riot sightseers turned back.

We stumbled across a parliamentary chamber. A large auditorium with a few padded ministers chairs facing hundreds of empty seats, a speech podium at the front and a distinguished head chair behind those of the ministers. A young looking 20yr old was pretending to make a speech and a teenage boy sat in the head chair behind him, clapping with ministerial ruckus and smashing his fist on the table; his parliamentary college was making a fine and agreeable speech.

A dozen on lookers, young and old, clapped and laughed. I made my way down to the ministers chairs and sat in one, facing the auditorium. The four or so chairs beside me quickly filled with old Kyrgz men, a couple in kalpaks, and a new democratic bench had been formed.

We sat laughing like unparented children, shaking hands, sealing deals and posing for mobile phone pictures. If Orwell had written Animal Farm about this revolution, we could have been chimpanzees, the Peanut Parliament in session.

A room on one of the upper floors had been burnt out and still smoking. The corridor was thick with fumes and floors were wet from the sprinkler systems. We moved downwards again. There was a trail of blood down one stairwell and a thick red pool soaked up by a ripped curtain on one of the ground floors, but considering the amount of gun fire the night before, it seemed hardly representative of the trouble.

In the first foyer we’d seen, where they’d been sweeping with the coat rack I watched as a man re-arranged the pictures of past presidents on the floor, as they’d been torn from the wall. Another man, picked up one of a respected past president and re-hung it on a slant, quickly stepping back before anyone could contradict him.

Then we heard shouting and a small crowd ran towards us. A tiny panic spread but didn’t last – people were not so easily startled now. A guy in a kalpak, draped in a Kyrgyz flag and carrying a flagpole walked cartoonishly towards the panic, and two younger delinquents came bolting towards us laughing, a fat old man trotting after them with a wooden pole and yelling.

Then another man started shouting and rounding people up to get out. There had been enough looting. While some were just curious or still venting anger, others had begun to realise that they’d be needing a parliament building to install a new government, and that repairing it would cost money, so began to control the revelry. We were near the door and sensing the possibility of a shift in mood, took this as our chance to leave.

Nearly an hour after climbing into the White House we walked back out into the morning sun. I picked up a bullet shell and gazed at the sky, knowing we’d just bore witness to living history and the bloody infancy of a new Kyrgyzstan.

Patrick Barrow

To check out our news feed, or the latest issue of the Spektator, visit www.thespektator.co.uk. If you have an issue you feel strongly about or would like to write about please email: editor@thespektator.co.uk

The ruling family sank its teeth into every successful enterprise, thus every successful enterprise is deemed contaminated and closed, pending ‘investigation’. A new commercial elite moves in with its political cousins, and businesses that enjoyed patronage under the old order are either discarded or expropriated at will. The process takes time, and in the chaos of the intervening period, money disappears.

Asia Universal Bank (AUB) has taken a giant hit, having previously been a magnet for foreign investors and economics graduates from Bishkek’s best universities. Many of their staff are on standby for the sack, and talk of a run on the bank has set nerves on edge across the capital.

MGN, a conglomerate owned chiefly by Yevgenni Gurevich, whose close ties to the former President’s son Maxim Bakiev were well known, appears to have withdrawn from the country completely.

Their chain of classy entertainment venues have closed down overnight and the management isn’t available for comment. One of these venues, popular evening hangout Da Vinci, was practically atomized over the course of the riots that began on April 7.

But if one vestige of the outgoing elite’s wealth has remained in tact, aside from a potential glut of ‘unofficial’ avenues, it reveals itself in the peculiar form of a stake in second tier English football club Blackpool F.C.
.

Bloomfield Road stadium, home of Blackpool F.C

The investment is hardly befitting to a collective who had monarchic aspirations. When oligarch Roman Abramovic bought Chelsea F.C, seeking in part to shield himself from a Russian government busy hounding the beneficiaries of post-soviet ‘privatization’, he bought a blue chip, Champions League outfit and immediately announced his intention to take on the world in one mind-boggling, free-spending summer.

Blackpool, by contrast, are nicknamed ‘the seasiders’, their heyday was in the 1950s and their stadium, Bloomfield Road, isn’t fully enclosed. The gulf between the two clubs serves to highlight Kyrgyzstan’s comparative obscurity, its poverty of resources that even when embezzled comprehensively, can’t buy a decent football club.

Yet if the Bakievs and the vampire state they set about constructing were a source of puzzlement to the outside world, they were a nightmare for citizens trying to make their way underneath them. While the more refined former president Askar Akaev was content to sit primly atop of the whole rotting edifice, skimming money off big business and flogging parts of Lake Issyk Kul to the Kazakhs and Chinese, the Bakievs wanted fifty percent of anything with a pulse.

Restaurants, nightclubs, Internet cafes and hotels were all brought into the fold during a five year marathon of greed. Then the common people were targeted. Bills for utilities such as electricity and hot water were raised massively in January 2010. A 60 tiyin charge for successful connection was applied by every mobile network provider in the country and it was widely held, although never proven, that the money went straight into Maxim Bakiev’s pocket.

Even more so than in 2005, the stripped shells of ‘Narodni’ stores all over the capital reflected the character of the outgoing regime – it was a smash and grab presidency.

In politics though, the art of calculation is integral, and as much as the ruling family understood the concept of profit, they never grasped that of margins. ‘The patience of the people is not without limits’ read one of the less defamatory slogans on display outside the White House on the afternoon of Wednesday April 7.

As predictable as they were in hindsight, the events of that evening and the days that followed on from it took the Bakievs completely by surprise. They had been busy making plans for future extortions.

It is said that power’s light is blinding, and that once cast out from its glare there is only eternal darkness. At least the ex-president’s predecessor had a PhD in Physics – he can take refuge in books, read lectures and immerse himself in the familiarity of academic life. But what could Bakiev lecture? He was at best a smart thug, born for the cut and thrust of the Kyrgyz political scene. And now he has been thrust.

Yet if he can content himself with one thought, as he continues to live the life of a guest in a country that would rather be without him, it will surely be that at least somewhere, far in the distance, he still has a place where he is welcome – the directors’ box at Bloomfield Road.

To check out our news feed, or the latest issue of the Spektator, visit www.thespektator.co.uk. If you have an issue you feel strongly about or would like to write about please email: editor@thespektator.co.uk