Week in Kyrgyz blogs. Roundup
Here we provide you with an update on the blogging activity in the blogsphere of Kyrgyzstan during the past week.
In one accord bloggers from Kyrgyzstan expressed their dissatisfaction with the way the problem is being handled by officials. Thus Naryn Ayip emphasizes:
“ I’m surprised that the parliament is completely inadequate in dealing with all its internal problems. Everyone knows that neither Aydar Akaev nor Malabaev (whose nickname was “family pocket”) never even showed up in parliament since the moment of their registration in March 2005. And still it is a problem to get rid of them. ” Azattyk radio journalist argues: “The one who is elected as a member of parliament is supposed to WORK in the parliament. Those mentioned in the CEC’s report are just truants. It’s almost one third of their terms that they were absent in the parliament. Can you imagine any student or state employee behaving like that and not showing up at the workplace for 1,5 year? In this case an absentee would have been hired ”
Nastia on Russian neweurasia reinforces the point of Naryn Ayip, quoting the Labor Code of Kyrgyzstan. She states:
“Both Malabaev and Akaev, along with those parliamentarians trying to protect the “rights” of their permanently absent colleagues, are completely ignorant about the laws of the country, where they “serve”. It is clearly stated in the Labor Code (article 83) that the contract between the employee and the employer can be broken in case the employee, with no prior notice, is absent at the workplace for 3 hours during the workday. ” “Don’t we employ our MPs,”-asks Nastia. “If so, it’s evident that the contract between Kyrgyz deputies and the people who “hired” them, can be terminated on the basis of the common law, which applies to every citizen of the country. No exceptions should be made,”-she states
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Among other issues discussed by the bloggers in Kyrgyzstan are economy and social problems. Thus Naryn Ayip also touches upon the problem of the state debt of Latvia to Kyrgyzstan. According to his information this debt is not very big- just $84000, but official Riga doesn’t seem to be willing to pay back. Naryn Ayip states that the precedent with state debts has already been created when Ukraine refused to return $28 mln. As it is emphasized in the post: “Kyiv keeps fanning Kyrgyzstan off.” Based on the analyses of the current situation Naryn Ayip concludes:
“ This signifies the level of respect or, to be precise, the lack of respect to Kyrgyzstan on the international arena and among other CIS countries…Just to back up let me remind about the debt o Kyrgyzstan to Russia, it is $ 130 mln., and since we can not return this sum to Russia at the moment we every time need to humbly ask our “big brother” to pospone the deadline of the payment. Russian generously agrees and we keep accumulating tremendous interest, being added to the state debt of Kyrgyzstan annually ”.
Another post, having to do with the economy of Kyrgyzstan from its local angle, is discussed in the article about the state initiative to increase taxes for gasoline traders in Kyrgyzstan in order support the state budget in 2007. The plan is that new taxes will bring additionally up to $350 million, it is not revealed, though, in the financial calculations how ordinary consumers in the country can suffer from the bright idea of the homegrown economists. In the post, I’m quoting the head of the Association of Oil and Gasoline Traders in Kyrgyzstan with his prognosis on how consumer process may skyrocket from the new taxes. I also argue that the population of the country will hardly benefit from such innovations since the state budget of Kyrgyzstan is non-transparent with all its transactions being skillfully manipulated and with social payments rarely reaching target groups.
