[Mb-civic] washingtonpost.com Counterrevolution

[Michael Butler]

washingtonpost.com
Counterrevolution



Friday, February 4, 2005; Page A16

PRESIDENT BUSH and other Western leaders are still celebrating the
democratic revolution in Ukraine, but in other former republics of the
Soviet Union an entirely different response is underway. Post-Soviet leaders
who, like Ukraine's former regime, have lived by corruption, rigged
elections and thuggish repression are frantically seeking to head off a
repeat of the popular "orange revolution," or the earlier "rose revolution"
in Georgia. In recent weeks they have banned opposition parties, thrown
their most plausible democratic challengers in jail and cracked down on
Western pro-democracy organizations. They have also sought help from a
familiar address: the Kremlin of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One visitor to Moscow last month was Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of
Kazakhstan. The Central Asian nation's long-suffering opposition was
inspired by the events in Ukraine; representatives of three opposition
parties even traveled to Kiev. Mr. Nazarbayev, who had staged his own rigged
parliamentary elections just a month before Ukraine's, responded quickly. He
dissolved the leading opposition party; brought tax charges against the
local branch of the Soros Foundation, which promotes democratic reform; and
filed a defamation lawsuit against a leading opponent, Zamanbek Nurkadilov.
He was then warmly received by Mr. Putin, who granted him a border treaty
that will allow the two governments to jointly exploit a gas field. "God has
given us each other," the grateful Kazakh tyrant said to the Russian leader.

Next to turn up in Mr. Putin's antechamber was Askar Akayev, president of
Kyrgyzstan. Ruler of his small, mountainous nation for 15 years -- one year
longer than its existence as a sovereign state -- Mr. Akayev has real reason
to sweat. He has parliamentary elections scheduled on Feb. 27, and his
opposition is openly modeling itself after Ukraine's freedom movement,
adopting the color yellow and the tulip as its emblems. Mr. Akayev tried
banning his principal opponent, former foreign minister Roza Otunbayeva,
from the ballot, but that only made things worse: The opposition began
organizing protests in the streets of Bishkek, the capital, and a defiant
parliament passed a law repealing the regulation used to block Ms.
Otunbayeva's candidacy. So Mr. Akayev, who in the past has sought alliance
with the United States, turned to Mr. Putin. In Moscow last week, he
promised to make a recently established Russian military base in his country
"a key element of security in Central Asia"; unspoken, but implied, was a
corresponding downgrade of a U.S. airbase that has been used since 2001 for
operations in Afghanistan.

Some Western commentators have speculated that Mr. Putin might have been
chastened by his failed attempt to install a like-minded thug as Ukrainian
president. On the contrary: Mr. Putin's circle appears to have concluded
that its only error was not insisting on the preemption of Ukraine's
democratic opposition. As would-be freedom fighters are repressed or jailed
around the region (the pro-Moscow dictator in Belarus also has dispatched
his most plausible challenger to prison), Mr. Putin soothes nervous
autocrats with Kremlin hospitality and economic favors. President Bush, who
has sworn to stand by democratic reformers facing repression, has some work
to do in Eurasia -- unless, that is, he fears offending Mr. Putin.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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