Moscow, Oct. 9, (dpa/GNA) – Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov said on Friday that he would be willing to resign after a new government is formed, following mass protests this week in which demonstrators seized key administrative buildings in the capital, Bishkek.
Jeenbekov accepted the prime minister’s resignation in a decree on Friday, according to a statement posted on his website.
In a separate address, he called for a restoration of order in the Central Asian country, a former Soviet republic that borders China and maintains close ties with regional power Russia.
“I call on all political forces to maintain peace and calm in the country, and not divide the people,” Jeenbekov said, affirming the electoral authority’s demand for new parliamentary elections.
“After the legitimate heads of the executive authorities are approved and the country takes the path of legality, I am ready to leave the post of president of the Kyrgyz Republic,” said Jeenbekov, who has led Kyrgyzstan for three years.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets in Bishkek, a city of about 100,000 people, on Monday after the official results of the weekend’s parliamentary elections were revealed to show broad approval for pro-government parties, with the front-runner loyal to Jeenbekov.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which independently monitored the elections, said there were reported irregularities, including credible allegations of vote-buying.
Kyrgyzstan’s electoral authority later annulled the vote. New elections are now expected within the coming months.
Protesters had stormed into the parliament building, presidential offices and a national security department in Bishkek.
They freed Jeenbekov’s predecessor, Almazbek Atambayev, from custody from the national security committee building, the state news agency reported.
Atambayev, who served as president from 2011 to 2017, was taken into custody last year on corruption allegations that surfaced amid a personal rivalry with Jeenbekov.
There have been two revolutions in the past two decades in Kyrgyzstan, in 2005 and 2010.
Atambayev’s passing of the helm to Jeenbekov, then a member of the same political party, in 2017 was the first peaceful transition of power in the country since the Soviet era.
GNA