Kyrgyz parliament approves bill to “correct” national flag

The Kyrgyz parliament on Wednesday approved President Sadyr Japarov’s plan to change the national flag, so the sun on it does not look like a sunflower.

The government submitted the bill to parliament in September. MPs passed it in the first reading on 29 November.

On Wednesday MPs approved the bill in the second and third readings at once – voting 58 — 6 and 59 — 5 respectively.

Following the vote, Speaker Nurlanbek Shakiyev congratulated the MPs with “the correction of the flag”.

He added that the decision makes the current parliament “legendary”, because it will go down in history as “the one that corrected the flag”.

The move has been strongly criticised by civil society and some MPs as a waste of time. 

Earlier in December authorities detained the most vocal critic of the move, civil activist Aftandil Jorobekov.

He was detained a day before a rally in Bishkek that he organised to protest the bill. Jorobekov was charged with calls to “actively oppose authorities’ legal orders” and mass disturbances.

Last week, President Sadyr Japarov admitted for the first time that the idea to change the flag belonged to him.

“We are not making it blue or white, we are introducing only small changes,” Japarov told a People’s Assembly meeting.

Japarov earlier said that some foreigners took the sun on the flag for a sunflower. Once the flag has been changed, he added, “the sun will shine on us, and smile at us” and from then on ”we shall be a developed and independent country”. 

Reacting to the MPs passing the bill on Wednesday, opposition journalist Leyla Saralayeva described the MPs who voted for the change as “enemies of the state”.

“Now our flag officially features a choke-chain collar,” she said in a Facebook post.

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