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| Global update | Government fails 'ordinary people' BY KATHY GANNON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS DARDOI, Kyrgyzstan — Jumatai is 8 and looks much younger. He can’t walk. He can’t close his mouth, so he can only eat mashed food. The state should have treated his disability, his grandmother says, but instead it turned its back on or dinary people. Across Kyrgyzstan, frustrations such as these fused into the street protests that climaxed last week with crowds storming the presiden tial office building and driving out Askar Akayev. “The government made such a mess of things,” said Aiymkan Baita sheva, the grandmother. “I wish that just once Akayev would have driven past here. Right now I am feeling so much anger. What can 1 do?” The family lives in Dardoi, an im poverished market town just a 15-minute drive from the presi dent’s office. The family’s unheated home, with no gas or running water, is typical of conditions on the out skirts of Bishkek, the capital, where thousands migrated from the coun tryside hoping to cash in on post Soviet capitalism but instead live in slums. Before 1990, when Kyrgyzstan was still a communist republic, it offered free health care and housing, and even then it was one of the poorest Soviet regions, with 32 percent of its people living in poverty. Today the U.N. De velopment Program estimates that about 44 percent of Kyrgyzstan’s 5 mil lion people live in poverty. The poor blame Akayev, who came to power in the Soviet era, for corruption, the collapse of the com munist social safety net and the rise of cutthroat capitalism. They have seen Bishkek fill up with cell phones, Mercedes-Benz showrooms and ads for Versace sunglasses, while Baita sheva’s 11-year-old granddaughter is n’t in school because the family can’t afford the $16 enrollment fee or the transport costs. Baitasheva, her two daughters and seven grandchildren live on about $170 a month. The daughters get up at 3 a.m. to sell cigarettes, chewing gum and toys at a nearby market and bring home about $2.50 a day. A son-in-law earns about $100 a month as a trucker and isn’t home much. A quart of milk costs about 60 cents, a piece of flat bread 25 cents. Rent on the family’s barely furnished two-room hovel is about $40 a month. Baitasheva says it cost her $75 to be treated by a doctor for a heart ailment. The children spend the day on the thinly matted floor, wrapped in blankets, hands ice cold. Water is fetched from a pump outdoors in the snow. The grandmother said she tried to get the boy into a home for handi capped children near Bishkek but was told to take him south to her home town, Jalal-Abad, in the poor est part of the country. Months later, Jalal-Abad became a bastion of the protests that brought down Akayev. His temporary replacement, Kurman bek Bakiyev, is from Jalal-Abad, but Baitasheva isn’t reassured. “I am still afraid because even now 1 don’t know for sure if Bakiyev is in charge or whether Akayev will come back,” she said. Venera Kojemkylova, 15, lives next door, crammed with her mother, un cles, aunts and cousins in a three room house of mud and straw. Kojemkylova’s father died when she was 4. Her mother, Anara, oper ates a fast-food stall in the market, bringing home $5 a day. Venera Kojemkylova warmed her self with an electric hot plate while her aunt, Nurkyz, shoved coal into a heater, her head hidden beneath a Kyrgyzstan in perspective The Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan achieved independence in 1991. Regional clans and the tensions that exist between them weigh heavily on the country's politics. ► Area: 79,400 square miles ► Population: 5,081,429 (’04 est.) ► Ethnic groups: Kyrgyz 64.9%, Uzbek 13.8%, Russian 12.5%, Dungan 1.1%, Ukrainian 1%, Uygur 1%, other 5.7% (1999) ► Religions: Muslim 75%, Russian Orthodox 20%, other 5% ► Industrial exports: gold, mercury, uranium, natural gas, electricity ► Age structure: 0-14 years 32.3% 15-64 years 61.6% 65 years and over 6.1% Gross domestic product in billions $1.6 $17 $1.2 1999 2002 2003 KAZAKHSTAN L TALAS fy' \ . ^ J \ , y °Tashkenr H Jalal-Abad Vi \ UZBEK, y f b'-'—j— Bishkek '^ BISHKEK •® r Dushanbe TAJIKISTAN O SOURCES: ESRI, CIA World Fact Book KYRGYZSTAN CHINA 0 100 mi 100 km AP broad scarf. “This is our only heat. For us life is very difficult. Sometimes 1 wonder how 1 will feed my family,” Anara said. “I don’t know how this new government will do anything for us. No one did anything before. I just want the new government to take care of ordinary people, people like us. We are the poorest of our people. ” Erkin Moldaliyev, who sells used clothes at the Dardoi market, was among the demonstrators who forced Akayev to flee to Russia. Echoing a complaint heard widely across the country, he said Akayev was corrupt. “He and his family took every thing. They kept everything and left nothing for the people," he said. He was cautiously hopeful. “We hope the new government will be different and that everything will be transparent,” he said. “But we don’t know for sure because some of the same people are there and we hope that we have not exchanged one set of bad people for another set of bad people. ” Sharon's Gaza Strip pullout plan goes to Supreme Court BY RAVI NESSMAN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS JERUSALEM — Israel’s parliament on Monday rejected a last-ditch at tempt to torpedo Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, vetoing a proposed national referendum. The plan now goes to the nation’s Supreme Court. Demoralized by the defeat, set tlers said they would move their fight into the streets, promising to bring 100,000 protesters to the set tlements slated for evacuation to prevent the withdrawal. They also pinned their hopes on the Supreme Court, which agreed Monday to hear a chal lenge to the law providing the legal framework for the withdraw al from the entire Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements. Approval of a referendum would have almost certainly delayed the withdrawal, scheduled for this sum mer, and could have brought down Sharon’s government and forced new elections. Sharon has repeatedly rejected calls for a national vote as a stalling tactic. Opinion polls show a large majority of Israelis back the withdrawal plan. After a debate by angry law makers, the Knessetdefeated the referendum proposal 72-39. “This is a dramatic statement of the Israeli parliament that disen gagement is going to be carried out as planned,” Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said. Settlers, thousands of whom protested near the Knesset, said the vote would split Israeli society. The government missed a chance to “pre vent a violent confrontation and civil war,” the Settlers Council said. The vote exposed the deep divi sions in Likud, a hawkish party filled with settlers and their allies that was stunned by Sharon’s sudden reversal last year of his longtime policy of backing settlement building. Sharon says the pullout will help Israel hang on to parts of the West Bank. Only 13 of Likud’s 40 legislators voted against the referendum, forc ing Sharon to rely on the support of dovish parties and Arab legislators. The disengagement plan repeated ly has won Knesset votes. In what will likely be its final legislative test, Sharon must get his budget passed by Thursday, a near certainty after the opposition Shinui Party agreed to support the spending plan. The Supreme Court hearing was set for April 8 before an expanded panel of 11 judges, the Courts Ad ministration said. Israeli legal analyst Moshe Negbi said the court decided to hear the case to show that justice was being done, but it was highly unlikely to strike down the law. John Paul II misses post-Easter blessing because of illness BY NICOLE WINFIELD THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II skipped another beloved tradition Monday — a post-Easter blessing from his window — ending the East er holiday as silently as he began it. A few hundred people had gath ered in St. Peter’s Square in hopes that John Paul would appear as he has on each Easter Monday of his 26 year pontificate, and Vatican TV cam eras zoomed in on his third-floor window around noon. But the curtains remained closed as the 84-year-old pope continued recovering from Feb. 24 surgery to insert a tube in his throat to help him breathe. “Despite the regret, we’re happy be cause it’s good that he continues his convalescence without strain,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, head of programming at Radio Vatican. John Paul’s appearance on Easter Sunday, when he tried but failed to speak, was still on the minds of many at the Vatican, a dramatic end to a Holy Week in which the pope’s suf fering was clearly evident. John Paul had come to his studio window at the end of Easter Mass to bless the tens of thousands of peo ple in the square below. Aides read ied a microphone, and he tapped it as if preparing to speak. But after uttering a few unintelligible sounds, he made the sign of the cross with his hand and the microphone was taken away. Many in the crowd cried and oth ers quietly applauded in apprecia tion of the pope’s efforts to speak to them. Vatican Radio said Monday it would be difficult to ever forget the pope’s pained “Urbi et Orbi” blessing and that it would “remain in the history of the church and humanity." “This silence, full of emotion and desire to speak beyond the physical ability to communicate, spoke to us perhaps as never before the univer sal language of love,” Lombardi said. “For us it was enough. We un derstood what the pope wanted to say, and how much he wanted to bless us.” John Paul last spoke to the public on March 13, shortly before he was discharged from the hospital for a second time in a month. In addition to the breathing tube, John Paul suf fers from Parkinson’s disease, which makes it difficult for him to talk. He followed the Holy Week cere monies by television from his apart ment. He also appeared via live video hookup to the faithful mark ing Good Friday at Rome’s Colosse um. But he never spoke. 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