This is a translation of the article that Inga posted on Russian neweurasia.

One more big PR campaign has recently started in Kyrgyzstan. This time it is all about changing public opinion about the fact that Kyrgyzstan is about to enter the club of the poorest nations on the globe, HIPIC. After becoming a member, Kyrgyzstan will qualify for discarding its state debt to the international community. This, according to a number of analysts, can become a salvation for the country with such excessive monetary obligations. Opponents of the idea, though, state that after entering HIPIC Kyrgyzstan will automatically become another “banana republic”, sacrificing its international status and development prospects. Public controversy spurred state officials to launch an advertising campaign, aimed at promoting all advantages of the membership in HIPIC.

In the course of our investigation we discovered that a whole bunch of techniques is devised for this PR campaign. Thus, one of the coaches of the School for the Advanced Informational Development in Bishkek mentioned in an interview to neweurasia that even neuro-linguistic methods will be used in the PR campaign. Our informant referred to it as telepathy. He emphasized :

“This method is widely used during election campaigns. It is very handy, because you can instill whatever you wish. It works with electorate, why shouldn’t it work in all other cases ”

Dwelling on this statement it is easy to imagine a situation that people around the country will, all of a sudden, be struck by the idea that HIPIC is a cool endeavor. The idea seemingly comes from nowhere and there is no need to question it. People will think that they, themselves, came up with this conclusion.

Another technique is to brainwash journalists, state officials and civil society activists. This approach is widely used when there is a need to impose official opinions on general public using both mass media, controlled by the government, and other state bodies. National Bank of Kyrgyzstan seems to be the main driving force behind this new spectacular campaign. The main bank of the country has already staged a seminar for journalists. The main motivation is to show journalists figures that speak for themselves. During this seminar the head of the PR department of the National bank of Kyrgyzstan Aynura Aybolaeva mentioned:

“ According to our calculations Kyrgyzstan will benefit tremendously after entering HIPIC. The amount of the external debt will be decreased to 40% from GDP, and this is more than enough”.

It turned out that in the National Ban k of Kyrgyzstan they have already drafted a schedule of the meetings and seminars for different target audiences. According to the stuff of the National Bank the main purpose of that “ is to counterweigh the populism some politicians who oppose the idea of entering HIPIC”.

We can now testify that spin-doctors’ intentions are very serious. The process of changing public opinion will be in affect till the final stage of official negotiations between Kyrgyzstan and the international community. The date of final negotiations is still kept in secret: rumor has it that it can either happen in December or January. And even though the outcome of these negotiations is not clear, some predictions already stir public minds. Thus, as one of Kyrgyz high officials mentioned in our off the record discussion:

“ Who should we blame for the embezzlement of foreign credits and investments? Now it’s impossible even calculate who’s spent what for this past 15 years. We cannot even have an audit since it has to do with corruption in present and in the past. That is why so many “big cheese people” favor the idea to become enter HIPIC. Donors in this case will discard all our debts with no audits and inspections.”