In Their Own Words: Corruption

You can't read about Kyrgyzstan without hearing about corruption. Everyone talks about it. I interviewed an official in one of Kyrgyzstan's many political parties and asked him about it. If his ideas sound a little disjointed, that's because they were.

For a good life…regular people just need to have conditions were they can work, and reasonable distribution of wealth. Everything they earn…and then, as everyone says right now, we’re fighting corruption. So getting rid of corruption and creating normal working conditions. If you look at the history of the Kyrgyz, we are divided into clans. There are larger clans and then…it’s in our blood. For example, I become a director, I pull in my brothers, relatives, my clan. It’s in our blood. I don’t know sometimes it...trying to stop it doesn't seem to work, so...

Researcher: If you were put into such a position, would you do that? Put your own people in places of power?

Informant: I probably wouldn’t be able to. There’s a new generation—the goal of our party is to attract the youth. We have a goal to get the youth into this work. Right now everyone in the government, in high positions, they’ve been there for 15-20 years. The people who were working during Akayev’s administration [Akayev was the former president, ousted in 2005] are still working for Bakiev [the new president]. The youth have a very different view. But we [the older generation] have it in our blood.

Researcher: You’re used to it.

Informant: Yes, we’re used to it. If only the youth can fix that.

Researcher: Why do you think the youth have a different opinion, different views?

Informant: First of all young people…there’s so much progress..the have command of such a wealth of information, not like us. We were raised in a very narrow environment. Nowadays even from a young age they know so much. Also, and this is just my opinion, they just aren’t as interested in their relatives. That’s all.