Bishkek, Oct. 10: Kyrgyzstan on Sunday voted in elections for the first parliament with real power in ex-Soviet Central Asia, hoping the polls will bring stability after a year of violence that left hundreds dead.
The President, Ms Roza Otunbayeva, who came to power in a bloody uprising in April and has championed the new political system, rejected warnings from Russia that the elections risked sparking a resurgence of the violence.
“Today I am calm and I think that the elections will proceed normally, without excesses, because a lot of resources have been invested in them,” she told reporters as she cast her vote.
Kyrgyzstan created Central Asia’s first parliamentary democracy in a referendum earlier this year after the bloody April revolution, which toppled the former president, Mr Kurmanbek Bakiyev, and deadly inter-ethnic clashes in June.