BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — Kyrgyzstan holds a referendum on a new constitution today, a risky gamble amid deadly ethnic tensions but one the interim government hopes will legitimize its power until elections in October.
The Central Asian nation was on a security alert, deploying almost 8,000 officers and an equal number of volunteers to keep peace. Checkpoints were set up in the capital, Bishkek, and in Osh and Jalal-Abad, two southern cities wracked by ethnic purges against minority Uzbeks this month.
The vote — supported by the United Nations, the U.S. and Russia — is seen as an important step on the road to democracy. Still, questions remain about how successful it can be coming so soon after violence left hundreds of Uzbeks dead and forced up to 400,000 to flee.
The proposed constitution, the seventh that the former Soviet republic has seen in its 19 years of independence, does little to address the causes of the violence that swept the south.
The document that has been touted by Kyrgyz officials as a transition from despotism to the region’s first parliamentary democracy looks strikingly similar to the constitution drawn up by former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who was ousted in a bloody revolution three months ago.
It makes mostly cosmetic changes to parliament. But it does nothing to guarantee a greater role for Uzbeks, who make up about 15 percent of the country’s 5.5 million people but have long complained of being left out of the halls of power.
