People Power: A Woman’s Touch

The government of the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan today yielded to People Power. Inspired by recent victories in the Ukraine and Georgia, thousands of people showed up in the streets, with relatively little violence, displaying the yellow and pink colors which signified their opposition to the government. Opposition leaders, committed to non-violence, negotiated earnestly, convincing the country’s security forces not to attack their fellow citizens.

The instantaneous communication afforded by cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, and weblogs, and the news coverage instantaneously feeding back from radio, TV, and the web, lets an entire people come to know simultaneously when the government ceases to be blessed by the “mandate of heaven.” The government knows it better than anybody else, and they know that the people know that they know. It becomes a matter of how to achieve the transition without anyone drawing sword.

So it should perhaps not be surprising that the non-violent mass street demonstrations called "people power" have been organized and led by women. Women hold positions of the highest authority in these “velvet revolutions,” even in areas where women have not traditionally held public positions of power. Roza Otunbayeva, now foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan, Julia Tymoshenko, Prime Minister of the Ukraine, and Nino Burdzhanadze, Speaker of Georgia's parliament, all led mass street demonstrations, following the 1986 example of Corazon Aquino, whose movement to lead her country out of tyranny gave rise to the concept of People Power. (For photos and more on Tymoshenko, Burdzhanadze, and Aquino, see http://mywebguide.us/images/politicalwomen/politicalwomen.htm#JuliaTymoshenko)

On January 8 of this year, 50 people supporting the Ata-Jurt (Fatherland) Movement gathered in front of the parliament building in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek and set up two tents. They were there to protest the disqualification of one of their leaders -- Roza Otunbayeva -- from participating as a candidate in the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections on February 27. Otunbayeva, a former foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan, had been disqualified by the Central Election Commission in accordance with a law that barred from candidacy anyone who had not lived in the country for the past five years. This was comic, because during that time she had been Kyrgyzstan’s ambassador to London and the United Nations deputy envoy to Georgia. In their own variation on the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Otunbayeva’s supporters wore yellow scarves and ribbons. By January 10, 150 people had joined the protest demanding that Otunbayeva be placed on the ballot. Showing unprecedented collaboration, five of the major electoral blocs composing Kyrgyzstan’s opposition endorsed Ata-Jurt’s demands (Eurasianet).

By March 16, after discredited elections, thousands were demonstrating throughout the country. Yesterday about 7,000 demonstrators, protesting against the rule of Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, marched toward the main government building in the capital of Bishkek (Reuters).

Otunbayeva yesterday told Izvestia, “Many employees of law-enforcement bodies took our side. For example, Osh militiamen joined us last night. We already control significant territories. The next goal, certainly, is Bishkek, the Presidential administration.

"We will not allow anybody to build a monarchic dynasty in our civilised republic," the motherly Otunbayeva told BBC's Central Asian Service. "I believe that [Kyrgyzstan] is absolutely ripe [for change]. Just one correction - we are talking not about a revolution, but about a peaceful, orderly and constitutional transfer of power. There has been no revolution, which ordinary people associate with killing and looting, in either Tbilisi or Kiev. Neither there will be such a revolution in our country."

Today Otunbayeva assumed the position of foreign minister in Kyrgyzstan's new government. Akayev has fled, leaving orders, according to a senior civil servant left behind, that no weapons be used against the demonstrators (NYTimes).
Roza Otunbayeva, leader of the opposition Ata-Jurt movement, center, speaks to her supporters during an opposition rally downtown Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on Monday, Feb. 28, 2005. Protests against Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev began after the first round of voting in February and swelled after run-off balloting that the opposition and the Organization for Security and Cooperation (news - web sites) in Europe said was seriously flawed. In most of Central Asia, the absence of a cohesive opposition group is encouraging regionalism and chaos according to a political acitivist. Opposition leaders sought to mimic Ukraine's Orange Revolution with a color of their own, but they couldn't agree. In the more prosperous and liberal north, Otunbayeva wrapped supporters in yellow. In the south, demonstrators wore pink, called their uprising the 'pink revolution'. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)