Finally, someone decided to start a political caricature blog on Kyrgyzstan. Although AKIpress has Beshbarmakia, they had stopped drawing cartoons and focused on the writing by disguising the identities of politicians, businesspeople, and other public figures under funny names.
Thanks to the excellent Registan, I came to appreciate the Japanese rendition of geopolitics of Central Asia. Enjoy!
Yesterday youth activists organized a flash-mob against the Kyrgyz government. They put on masks of sheep and one of them put a mask of a bull and wore boxing gloves.
If you have seen the Soviet movie "Kavkazskaya Plennitsa" you will appreciate the excellent parody to this move. The original conversation from the movie is about a bride-kidnapping tradition in one of the countries in the Caucasus. However, a team of stand-up comedians in a competition (KVN) remade it into a conversation where Dmitriy Medvedev is being convinced to participate in an ancient tradition of "presidential election." I hope you enjoy it!
Viewers from Kyrgyzstan can watch the movie here.
Actually, very few people would call it election. Russians are being given a chance to "approve"Putin's choice. After all, we are all democratic.
Back in 2000, when Boris Yeltsin resigned, the western press wrote "Putin Was Put In" as a word play. During the following eight years newspaper headlines in Russia read "Doubling GPD" or "GDP Growth" where GDP in Russian is VVP (ВВП) - Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Starting from this year, the Russians will give toasts to ladies ("to ladies" in Russian is "za DAM" - Dmitriy Anatolievich Medvedev). By the way, the 8th of March Women's Day is coming up.
Kyrgyzstan is in such a situation that we now need foreign aid to clean up our shit. We can no longer clean up after ourselves. This week, the Japanese government announced that they would put $37,000 to fixing public toilets in three southern provinces.
I mentioned the problems with dirty public toilets in Kyrgyzstan in one of my previous posts. Phenomenal. We can build huge mansions and drive SUVs, but cannot build normal outhouses.
After three weeks of hibernation, I start this year's blogging activity with a humorous, at least for me, article about an unruly 16-year old German boy, who was sent to Russia as his punishment.
"He has had to cope by collecting and chopping firewood to make his own fires, digging his own toilet and pumping water supplies from a well. He will stay there for nine months, separated from family and friends, the internet and television, under a programme designed specifically for him."
A joke in Russia (Life for Russians is a reality show for Germans) closely echoes this situation. What is more interesting, some of the delinquents have apparently been sent to as far as Kyrgyzstan. Life in Kyrgyzstan is a punishment for Germans!
There are so many different party slogans. They actually don't mean anything, because in principle they all call for a better future and don't differ at all. In fact, Kyrgyz voters are unaware of party platforms, their political, economic, and social policies. They associate each party with their leaders. Nothing more, nothing less. Since names of political parties, except for the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party, have primary meanings in Kyrgyz, I thought they can be easily used to make a single slogan.
So, this is the result: I wish you a bright path, my fatherland! Liberty bestows new power! Dignity for people's voice! Long live, a free Kyrgyzstan, and raise the blue banner over the universe! Forward, Kyrgyzstan, Go Forward!
It is incredible how people by a slip are saying Alga Kyrgyzstan (Akaev's Party) instead of saying Ak Jol. Yesterday, a guest speaker on National TV by mistake said "Alga..." and quickly corrected himself and said "Ak Jol" while discussing party campaigning. A local newspaper also reported how a dean in the Kyrgyz National University during a meeting with students said "Vote for Alga Kyrgyzstan... sorry for Ak Jol."
The elections process is continuing with the media substantially favoring President Bakiev's Ak Jol party and unfairly humiliating the opposition parties.
Yesterday I watched Russian stand-up comedian Mikhail Zadornov, who is known for his anti-Americanism (his famous line is "Американцы - тупые!" - Americans are dumb!) and self-flagellation of Russia and Russians. However, that is not the point in his show which is aired by RenTV. For the first time he criticized, or more accurately, ridiculed the Russian government, including President Putin.
Zadornov compared United Russia, pro-Putin party, to the bear in Russian fable Teremok. It is an Aesopian tale about a house shared peacefully by all animal, until a bear, United Russia's symbol, decides that it wants to live in the house and destroys it by his clumsiness and sheer size. He told all this in whisper, while regularly crying out "United Russia is a great party!" I could not believe my eyes. He also turned to the issue of Putin's heir in 2008. He concluded all by saying that if Putin decides to step down in 2008, he will head a new holding RossGosEnergoTVRadioSvyazNeftGazProm, a company which would control gas, oil, electricity, TV and radio, and communications, basically everything in Russia.
I found the video on YouTube. Enjoy!
First, President Bakiev is expected to address the country in his speech in the Parliament on September 19, 2007. Let's see if he has radically new thing to say.
Second, more and more people are painting a gloomy picture of the way Kyrgyzstan is heading. In an interview to weekly Obschestvenniy Reiting, opposition MP Kubatbek Baibolov characterized our society, especially the ruling elite, as being dominated by "parasitic dependence, blind servility, genuflection, primitive boot-licking, and double standards." He says that if we don't root these vices out, Kyrgyzstan will not go anywhere.*
This reminded me of the time couple of weeks ago when a friend of mine and I were having plov in Jalalabad Cafe and a man in his early 50's asked if he could join us on the tapchan, a wooden platform to dine on, because only two of us were occupying it, which could accommodate at least three more people. We agreed. He joined us and silently devoured his lagman as we ate and chatted about Kyrgyz politics. He then joined our discussions and defended the current way of doing politics. He said the president is a khan and as such he should act accordingly and people should obey him accordingly. It turned out that he worked on legal issues for President's Administration, as he confessed. Unfortunately, people like that man dominate the government.
Third, the situation in Iraq is worrying a lot of people, except extremists. The Economist's cartoon below depicts it well.
I guess you see people of such description not only in Kyrgyzstan, but everywhere around the world. For those who speak Russian, I decided to give what Baibolov said: "...пока в обществе господствует идеология иждивенчества, слепого чинопочитания и коленопреклонения, примитивного лизоблюдства и двойной морали, каких-либо серьезных сдвигов ожидать трудно, да и бессмысленно."
On that note, I read that the Constitutional Court declared that the November and December (current) constitutions are illegitimate because of the way they were passed. Ironically, judges of the CC were elected by the Parliament according to the December constitution, which makes them and their decision illegitimate as well. Anyways, this is a vicious circle of legal chaos that started in 2005, or as some say in 2000.
The past 3-day weekend (August 31 is the Independence Day) was packed with important events. I was in Osh at K&M's wedding, while also joining MT for kyz uzatuu, a feast given by the bride's family to relatives, friends, and neighbors.
Early morning on Friday we hit the road to Osh (my hometown). I, as the best man, joined MT and his family on a 10-hour road trip from Bishkek to Osh to get his fiancée ET from her parents' home. Because MT is from the north and ET is from the south, his parents were worried about differences - it becomes even more sensitive because they are subtle - in traditions and rituals of approaching bride's parents and relatives and take her from the house she was brought up in to a house where she will spend the rest of her life. Despite all the worrying, none of that mattered because both families took everything much easier than expected.
As for the K&M's wedding, it was the biggest wedding that I've ever seen, not that I've seen many. It was pretty impressive. A lot of food and drinks. But I could enjoy none of that because of my diarrhea. All I needed was water to keep me going, but even that was a problem. The day we arrived in Osh, a major accident occurred leaving half of the town, including the part where we lived and had the wedding, without water for 3 days.
This reminds of one important thing that Kyrgyz people need to think about - toilets. Kyrgyzstan will never improve, if we don't learn to build nice toilets with water and to keep them clean and odorless. And it is not only public restrooms in cafes or parks, but also private ones. I have seen enormous houses that some families have build, but their their toilets are outside. Put extra money, please!
As for the Independence Day celebrations, whole Kyrgyzstan watched Bakiev's dancing on the central square in Bishkek. Lots of pictures here.
Update: This is K&M's wedding motorcade.
Another piece of untamed territory at the mercy of great powers.
The Economist this week wrote that "the boom in energy and commodity prices has changed the economics of difficult searches for oil, gas and minerals. The steady shrinkage of polar ice-caps, as a result of global warming, is making previously inaccessible deposits much easier to get at—and helping to open some formerly icebound shipping lanes."
Hillarious: "Still more eye-catching—even if some of the footage shown on Moscow television really came from the film “Titanic”—was a Kremlin-backed voyage, which led to the planting, by a minisub, of a titanium Russian tricolour on the seabed." Read the rest of the article.
More humor off the topic: Reverent Humor
The Kyrgyz government is obsessed with the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. It will be hosted Kyrgyzstan in mid-August. AKIpress posted a number of pictures on new and refurbished old buildings that are being prepared to welcome presidents of China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Turkmenistan, the last two being only observers.
The Mayor of Bishkek, as the main implementer, has done "incredible" things: whitewashing trees and facades of buildings on the road from the Manas Airport to Bishkek and the main streets in Bishkek. As with buildings' being painted only on frontal sides, so are the trees, as you can see from the morrire's picture below. If only these changes were regular and less superficial, we would be living in another country.
