... and the band plays on!

From Revolt to Democracy

... The Bush administration has rightly urged Mr. Bakiyev to work closely with the OSCE, which is dispatching a team to Kyrgyzstan. The European election monitors can help to ensure that new legislative and presidential elections are fair to all sides and produce a government with a genuine popular mandate ...

... Yet if its revolution ends in pluralism, tiny Kyrgyzstan could have a crucial influence on the half-dozen other former Soviet republics where autocrats still rule. At a minimum, surviving dictators may conclude that the old trick of staging a rigged election is no longer safe.