KYRGYZ CITIZENS IN MALAYSIA TO VOTE IN REFERENDUM

By Ravichandran Rajamanickam

KUALA LUMPUR, June 26 (Bernama) -- Kyrgyz citizens in Malaysia will
participate in a referendum for a new constitution to be held tomorrow in their
Central Asian country, said Kyrgyzstan Ambassador to Malaysia Dr Bakir Uulu
Tursunbay.

He said the embassy located at Wisma Sin Heap Lee in Jalan Tun Razak would
be open Sunday to enable its citizens in Malaysia to cast their votes.

The voting process here will take place from 8am-8pm.

Bakir said, most of the 100-odd Kyrgyz citizens in Malaysia were students.
The rest who will take part in the democratic exercise are the country's
diplomats and family members, and the small number of Kyrgyz expatriates here.

However, he said they expected only about 60 of them to come and cast their
votes as the rest had gone for a holiday to their country, due to the university
holidays in Malaysia.

"I call upon our Kyrgyz citizens in Malaysia to come Sunday and fulfill
their constituional rights for a better future of our country," he told Bernama
in an interview through an interpreter at the embassy.

Bakir said that prior to this, the embassy held elections for its citizens
here, during the parliament election in 2007 and the presidential election last
year.

He said, besides voting for a new constitution, the referendum was also for
the people to legitimise the interim government under Roza Otunbayeva, after
former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev was deposed in an April revolt.

"The legitimisation is important so that the government can play the full
role in the international arena and receive full recognition from the
international community," he stressed.

Voters will be asked, whether they approved a new constitution that devolved
power from the president to the prime minister, besides the approval for
Otunbayeva to remain interim president until the end of 2011, before stepping
aside.

Under the new constitution, parliamentary elections would be held every five
years and the president, limited to a single, six-year term in office.

About 2.7 million Kyrgyz citizens are eligble to vote, including about a
million who reside abroad.

Bakir said the embassy had already received ballot papers from Bishkek and
the counting here would begin, once the voting process was completed at 8pm.

The result will be conveyed to the Kyrgyzstan Foreign Ministry and the
country's Central Voting Committee.

Bakir said the government went ahead with the referendum, despite ethnic
clashes in the southern part of the country between ethnic Kyrgyz and the Uzbek,
because the referendum was important for the future stability of the country and
the government.

Located in Central Asia, the landlocked and mountainous country is bordered
by Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the west, and has some 5.5 million
people.

The republic gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991.

-- BERNAMA



Delete & Prev | Delete & Next