Wave of Change

Who saw this coming?

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan - President Askar Akayev's government collapsed Thursday after opposition protesters took over the presidential compound and government offices, throwing computers and air conditioners out of windows in a frenzy of anger over corruption and a disputed election.

The popular uprising in this impoverished Central Asian nation of 5 million forced Akayev to flee, was breathtaking in its speed and resulted in only a few dozen injured. The government was the third in a former Soviet republic — after Georgia and Ukraine — to be brought down by people power over the past year and a half.

Not to mention those brought down by harder power, against a backdrop of freedom-oriented rhetoric, and all of a sudden, it's a fad sweeping the globe.

They say Reagan's speeches, calling the CCCP an "evil empire" (which it was), and demanding Die Mauer (The Wall) be torn down, had an electrifying effect on the subjugated people behind the Iron Curtain, who would find themselves free just a handful of years later. Yet Ronnie "Raygun" was derided as either a snoozing, out-of-touch candidate for the geriatric ward, if he didn't start a nuclear war first.

Likewise, the speeches of GWB are dismissed, and his motives cynically questioned. And yet, the objective truth is that millions of people, every few months, emerge from under the fist of a fraudulent government.

The Marxists, who are supposed, according to their divine mandate of historical inevitability, to be riding this wave of revolution, must be going nuts to find themselves left out!

"It's not the opposition that has seized power, it's the people who have taken power. The people. They have been fighting for so long against corruption, against that (Akayev) family," said opposition activist Ulan Shambetov, one of the protesters who sat in the president's chair.

The upper house of the parliament that held power before a disputed election met Thursday night and elected a former opposition lawmaker, Ishenbai Kadyrbekov, as interim president until a new presidential vote, perhaps as early as May or June.

There was no sign the new leadership would change policy toward the West or Russia. Unlike the revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, foreign policy has not been an issue.

How about that. Best of luck to them in starting fresh.