According to the poll of the International Republican Institute 48% of northerners and 72% of southerners in Kyrgyzstan are enthusiastic about the latest economical and political development of Kyrgyzstan a year after the revolution. The poll was conducted in cooperation with the well-known Gallup organization and seems to be the first case when the sociological research of such a scale was orchestrated in Kyrgyzstan. According to IRI 1,500 were interviewed in different regions of the country and were asked to address the questions of democratic development and economic sustainability of the country under the new leadership.

Surprisingly enough, in spite of the fact that the year after the revolution was marked with instability and protests, the results of the poll demonstrated that “54 percent feel the country is headed in the right direction, up from 45 percent in April 2005”. This seemingly contains a promise for the government that has been working under high pressure of opposition stating that no positive changes have been visible for the whole year.
In this light the outcries of opposition leaders calling for the resignation of the tandem of Bakiev and Kulov seems to be rather premature and hardly echoing the general attitude of the population of the country and people’s assessment of the activity of the president and his cabinet.

At the same time the power holders keep being challenged by the lack of general trust in terms of their economic and political practices. According to the results reported by IRI Kyrgyz population see no improvements with the corruption situation since April 2005. And this indeed could be a troubling sign for officials, providing the fact that it was exactly accusations in corruption that sparked public protests in March 2005 and than brought down the government of Askar Akaev.

In general it should be noted that it’s hard to construct the composite picture of the social and political reality in Kyrgyzstan as perceived by the population of the country. The research done by IRI and Gallup demonstrated that assessments of the current situation in Kyrgyzstan given by the citizens of the country are still far from being in one accord. Plus there were visible differences in terms of the evaluations provided by the North and South of the country. It wouldn’t be wise to jump to the trivial conclusions about the split of the country in this context but this can inevitably make us think that the division between “southerners” and “northerners” in Kyrgyzstan with its only 5 million population still remains a factor that can influence policy making practices of those eager to play this political card out.