Kyrgyzstan's new parliament to have first session
A majority of lawmaker from the Ata-Zhurt (Fatherland) Party which received the largest number of votes, did not turn up for the ceremony to get their mandates. Just 7 of the 28 Ata-Zhurt members came for the meeting with representatives of the Central Election Commission.
Ata-Zhurt sources told Itar-Tass that the reason behind it is "a split within the Party."
A crowd of 100 people that gathered near the building of the Supreme Council, threw eggs at several lawmakers of the new parliament.
Interim President Roza Otunbayeva is expected to address the parliamentarians later on Wednesday.
During the October 10 parliamentary election, 56 percent of the 2.85-million electorate came to voting stations. Twenty-nine parties were competing for 120 seats in the parliament. Just five of them cleared the 5-percent barrier, with 0.5 to 3 percent differences. Ata-Zhurt which finished first is expected to get 28 seats. It is followed by Social Democrats (26 mandates), Ar-Namys (Dignity) that is getting 25 seats, and Respublika (23 seats). Ata-Meken (Fatherland) finished last, and is expected to get 18 seats.
The CEC was counting votes for almost three weeks. It explained the delay by the necessity to recount votes at a number of voting stations. The CEC then annulled the election results at 20 of them, which are largely outside of Kyrgyzstan. Several political and public associations filed court actions demanding annulment of all election results. For example, the Butun Kyrgyzstan (One Kyrgyzstan) Party, which gathered 4.84 percent of votes, believes that the CEC had no right to hold the election because the state has no relevant Constitutional law.
On Tuesday, Kyrgyzstan's Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) said in a statement that it had instituted criminal proceedings over the violations detected during the parliamentary elections at several voting stations.
"During the October 10 elections in the election districts located in the town of Zheleznodorozhny (Moscow region), Kazan, St.Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen and Novosibirsk, and three election districts in the regional center of Osh, significant violations of legislation were committed," a Kyrgyz prosecutor said.