Afghan Veterans support Bakiev

Today the head of the Council of Veterans of the War in Afghanistan, Nurlan Torobaev (not related with Deputy family Torobaev from Dzhalal-Abad?), announced that his organization will support Kurmanbek Bakiev in the upcoming elections for the Kyrgyz presidency.

It was fascinating how Torobaev justified the decision of the council which, by the way, made the decision unanimously. It was stated that the veterans will support the president’s course for the rejuvenation of the country and his pre-electoral program. According to Torobaev such strong support is caused by the special attention, the president and his government paid to the council’s needs. Torobaev specifies publicly that the council was granted housing for its organization by a governmental decree in 2005. Even more so, the president handed seven vehicles over to regional branches of the Afghan Veteran Council.

As a result of the favorable treatment the council now operates much more professionally and wants to thank his generous supporter by mobilizing its members for the presidential campaign. Actually, that’s nothing new. Everybody in Kyrgyzstan knows that organizations like the Afghan Veterans, which fully rely on state support for their continuous existence, have to declare their full support for the incumbent powers. If they don’t, they loose material support or at least the chairman his position. From this perspective the introductory note of Torobaev, where he states that no pressure was put on his organization from the side of the state, reads like a blatant confirmation of the opposite. The statement reads in the original:

«Давления со стороны власти принять такое решение не было. У каждого есть право выбора. Если мы до 2005 года сидели в полуподвальном помещении и не могли нормально функционировать, то в 2005 года распоряжением правительства было выделено помещение, где мы сейчас работаем. Также 7 нашим структурным подразделениям президентом были подарены автомашины ВАЗ-2107. Президент относится к нам с большим пониманием, и мы решили его поддержать»

It gets ironic when Torobaev continues and lists all the favors the Veterans received from Bakiev. He thereby actually acknowledges – publicly – that his organization (and he himself) has been bought by the state. Once again the perilous nature of co-optation becomes apparent in Kyrgyz politics. What is left for an opposition that tries to promote alternative political concepts, if others publicly declare their co-optation into the power structures and thus promote a totally different rule for the political game? A rule that states that those win who are simply better in selling their political loyalty to the powers-that-be, whereas those loose that concentrate on the formulation of alternative political concepts.

The really sad thing about this story is that Torobaev’s statement doesn’t look like a conspiratorial act, aiming at the conscious promotion of the politics of co-optation; instead it reads like a stupid announcement of some guy who thinks that what he does is absolutely the right thing and for the best of Kyrgyzstan (and his organization).