|
CURRENT POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SITUATION IN KYRGYZSTAN
ASKAR AKAYEV,
First President of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, Moscow
After the March 2005 events in Kyrgyzstan [rioting protesters forced Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev to flee the small Central Asian republic over which he has presided for 15 years] I was offered teaching and research work at Moscow State University. Research work is a strong point of mine as I am a mathematician. I am obliged to the Russian and Soviet academic school which gave me good education. This is indicated by the fact that after 15 years of my political career I could return to the scientific work.
For these three years I have written about 20 academic articles. I wrote approximately 6 or 7 articles a year. In the main, I write my papers for the Russian Academy of Sciences reports and scholarly journals. One of my last papers was published in the USA. It is entitled “Influence of Business Cycles on the Long-Term Growth”. This subject is important today in America.
I thank my Russian colleagues, friends and scientists in the Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University for cordial welcome and support. As my experience shows there are sharp distictions between the academic circles and political establishment. When I left my presidential post in 2005, many politicans turned away from me. In the academic world the situation is different: I was received with open arms and supported. Now I give lectures at Moscow State University. I actively cooperate not only with the Russian scientists, but also with the German and Japanese researches. So, I devoted myself wholly to mathematics.
But I am a citizen of Kyrgyzstan and it does matter to me what is going on in the country. For 15 years I had lived in my native Kyrgyzstan and gave my energy and knowledge to this country. I did not plan to make a political career, but people asked me to come to power, and I decided that it was my duty to become the first President of Kyrgyzstan. I put my heart and soul into the politics, worked wholeheartedly until the March 2005 events.
For three years I have stayed out of the politics, but now that the situation in Kyrgyzstan has taken a dangerous turn, I cannot keep silent. This is the reason for my address.
I repeat that I am not going to return to politics. I have devoted my life to research work and I am quite happy about that. But I am still grieved for the country as the situation in all the spheres (social, economic) is worsening. Take the poverty problem, for example. Even when we were in our worst period we prevented that from happening. The poverty peak was in 1997. 60% of the population lived below the poverty line. We adopted the program on poverty eliminating and managed to lower it annually by 3-4%. In 2004 the poverty level was 34% and this achievement was acknowledged by the international financial institutions. But now, for three years and a half, the poverty level has become higher than 80-90%.
Apart from that, the country has recently faced energy and food crises. We used to harvest 1 million and 700 thousand tons of crops a year on average, but in the recent years, even a million tons have not been harvested in Kyrgyzstan. That means that Kyrgyzstan may face famine.
From 1998 to 2004 we had kept the inflation at the level of 3-4% on average. This was the best result in the CIS. At present the inflation makes up 30-40%. 40% is a critical level, if it heightened, Kyrgyzstan would face economic recession.
As regards an inflow of funds, even in neighboring Tajikistan the investments grew by 59%. In Kyrgyzstan the investments grew by 0.7% only, or there is no investment growth. That means that the next year the country may face an economic collapse. The government promises that the investments will grow by 7-8 %, but who will believe it?
It was announced that the schools would not be working for three months because of electric power shortage. In 1990s we had a difficult time, but no school was shut down even for a day. Now Kyrgyzstan is facing water shortage due to the populists, who run the country. The weak government has squandered all the water resources for two years. It will take seven years to bring water to the reservoirs. The authorities should have controlled the process properly. But the new government decided to make everybody happy at one stroke. Even now the authorities have neither program, nor strategy, nor philosophy how to govern the country, which could bring about an economic and social disaster. That’s why I decided to have my say. The people must come to realize that if anti-crisis steps are not taken, there will be a catastrophe and riots in the country in six months. I would not like the March 2005 events to happen again.
Following Askar Akayev’s address to the press conference in the Russian Agency of International Information RIA Novosti.
Prepared by Denis Kim, expert with the Eurasia Heritage Foundation
August 15, 2008
|
