Energy riots in Kyrgyzstan - by Richard... Thursday, April 08, 2010

Energy riots in Kyrgyzstan - by Richard... Thursday, April 08, 2010

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/

Covered widely by the media, the reports of the rioting in Kyrgyzstan yesterday vary widely in tone and content. But, even if you have to drill down into the piece, not even The Guardian can conceal the reason for the unrest, which has seen protestors beat a Cabinet minister to death.

"The violent rolling protests appeared to be largely spontaneous rather than a premeditated coup," it says, eventually telling us that a "leading expert" has said the government had triggered the protests by imposing punitive increases on tariffs for water and gas. "In the last few months there has been growing anger over this non-political issue," said Paul Quinn-Judge, central Asia project director of the International Crisis Group. 

"The government thought they could get away with it," he adds. "Most people agreed. But in the last few weeks we have seen several rumblings in the secondary towns and cities in Kyrgyzstan. There has also been a crisis inside government. Now it has all come together in one giant wreck."

Even the BBC is forced to concede this point but, in fact, the problem has been grumbling for more than "a few weeks". Unrest was reported by Radio Free Europe at the end of February, identifying the protestors as responding to the "electricity price hike".

There is much more to it than that, as The Daily Mail indicates, but even on 23 February the Institute for War & Peace Reporting had Timur Toktonaliev in Bishkek writing: "Soaring energy costs anger Kyrgyz", with prices for electricity having risen 100 percent and the cost of central heating shooting up by 500 percent. Clearly, energy prices have been the primary trigger of current events.


And therein is a lesson. For a country with a violent past, not too much can be read into it, but every society has its limits of tolerance and, where we have our own government determined to drive up energy costs, this could become a factor in triggering open dissent in this country as well. 

Here, the crucial issue in Kyrgyzstan was that the prices were driven up by government fiat, albeit following a decision to remove subsidies which had enabled energy to be sold at less than the cost of production. It can be assumed, from this, that where government action is directly responsible for price hikes, governments will take the flak.

It is far too extreme to suppose that we will any time soon see a Cabinet minister beaten to death on the streets of London, although there are not a few who would leap at such an opportunity if it was presented. But it is not a happy or a stable government which relies only on constant police protection to keep its members alive and safe.

Ministers, therefore, would do well to note the events in Kyrgyzstan. Even remote possibilities are still possibilities and, the way our politicians are behaving, they could yet become probabilities and then certainties.

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The Refusniks - by Richard... Wednesday, April 07, 2010

The polls go up and the polls go down, almost with the regularity of the tides. The latest, in The Times has the Tories dropping back from their ten point lead, on 39 percent, as against 32 for Labour and 21 for the Lib-Dims. Other parties are on eight percent.

This is a Populus poll, and the first to be undertaken entirely since the election date was named. More voters, we are told, now expect a hung parliament than believe the Tories can win outright.

Meanwhile, as most of the political blogosphere throws itself into the ersatz drama of the election campaign, there are but a few bloggers – a sturdy bunch – who are refusing to allow themselves to be swamped by the theatre.

One such is Autonomous Mind, who noted that the campaign is a "media event pure and simple." The only excitement, he says, is among the political class in its bubble and the media corps looking to fill column inches and broadcast seconds, then adding this fascinating observation: 

To demonstrate how out of touch the media really is, the phone-ins on BBC Five Live have astonished its presenters. Peter Allen on "Drive" was aghast about the indifference to the election shown by so many texters to the show, who are so fed up by the meaningless spin emanating from the politicos, they were calling in their droves for an end to the politics discussion. If it remains this way – and in all likelihood it will – this will be the most overhyped election in history, with potentially the smallest percentage turnout.

Samizdata also takes a cool look at the election, telling its readers:

... if you fear not voting Tory will give Labour more time to wreck the country, that is simply not the choice on offer ... nothing meaningful will change in Britain as long as the two main parties are essentially as one on the size and scope of the state, which at the moment they most certainly are ...

...and if you vote to endorse that fact just because you (quite rightly) loathe Gordon Brown, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Witterings from Witney is another who takes a jaundiced view of the proceedings andRaedwald's observations are well worth a read.

I am sure there are many other anarchic, contrarian and otherwise independent blogs out there, who share the public's view of this political circus, and I would be happy to link to them ... we're all in this together. 

In the meantime, it really is a great shame that the ballot paper cannot be tailored to deliver the same sentiments conveyed by the delightful spoof error report for Microsoft Explorer (illustrated). Voting would then be such fun.

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