Bakiyev’s brother allegedly behind provocation against Tekebayev: Will Bakiyev save himself again or will the Tulip Revolution turn into poppy dust?

Janysh Bakiyev--brother of President Bakiyev and now implicated in the Tekebayev scandal

The scandal surrounding the arrest and release of Omurbek Tekebayev in Warsaw continues to trouble internal politics in Kyrgyzstan. Yesterday, some one hundred Tekebayev supporters turned out to protest what they considered to be a political provocation against their patron. According to one source in Bishkek who has been following events over the last year, it was the first time he saw signs bearing the slogan “Bakiyev Ketsin!” (Bakiyev Leave!), mirroring the slogans of protesters that eventually forced former President Akayev to leave the country in March of 2005. The parliament, in turn is considering adopting a resolution that would ask President Bakiyev and Prime Minister Kulov to step down from power, call for the formation of a new coalition government, re-open the process of constitutional reform, and call for the resignation of various government bureaucrats, including the brothers of President Bakiyev. Furthermore, the resolution states that if President Bakiyev does not accept these terms, the parliament will call for mass protests throughout the country this Friday September 15. On the evening of September 11th, the parliament stayed late to discuss the resolution, but they could not come to a final decision except to resume discussions tomorrow on September 12.

This has all been in reaction to news that President Bakiyev’s brother Janysh Bakiyev, who just stepped down yesterday as the first vice-representative of the SNB (National Security Service), may be directly involved in planting heroin in the luggage of opposition leader Omurbek Tekebayev late last week. As Edil Baisalov’s excellent still-frame break down of the video tape from Manas airport points out, the vice-president of the airport, Nadyr Mamyrov, appears to have temporarily moved Tekebayev’s luggage from the view of cameras before his bags were put on board the plane to Istanbul. According to parliamentarian Melis Eshimkanov and the website www.24.kg, Mamyrov has already written a letter to President Bakiyev stating that he was ordered to place the heroin in Tekebayev’s luggage by none other than the president’s brother, Janysh Bakiyev. While both Janysh Bakiyev and Nadir Mamyrov deny that such a letter was sent to the president, it is widely assumed that Janysh stepped down from his position at the SNB due to his obvious implication in this scandal. Furthermore, Bakiyev’s most trusted (and infamous) advisor, Usen Sadykov is already speaking as if Mamyrov is guilty by denying that he has any links to the vice-president of the airport, save being from the same “kolkhoz” or collective farm.

It is still difficult to determine how this scandal will play out. As noted in an earlier post on the developing political crisis in Kyrgyzstan, the country has significant “protest fatigue,” and it will be difficult to muster mass public support for yet another political change when people want to return to stability as soon as possible. Much will depend upon whether Bakiyev can once again make the concessions he needs to in order to retain power. In this case, however, those concessions may require selling out his own brother.