Opposition protests in Kyrgyzstan (that I wrote about last week) against President Bakiev’s proposed constitution — which favors a strong president, go figure — has culminated in near-total parliamentary opposition to his choice. In fact, as RFE/RL reports, the protests have culminated in a tent town and 40,000 people on the streets around the presidential palace, with 2/3 of lawmakers breaking from Bakiev to set up a constituent assembly for the express purpose of writing a new constitution.

PRAGUE, November 6, 2006 (RFE/RL) — In the latest development in Kyrgyzstan’s political crisis, two-thirds of the Kyrgyz parliament has established a Constituent Assembly to adopt a new constitution.

Forty-five of the chamber’s 71 deputies forged the agreement.

Cholpon Bayekova, the head of the Constitutional Court, told parliament that because the existing constitution does not provide a mechanism to adopt a new constitution, a new body needed to be established.

The deputies present then agreed to set up a Constituent Assembly. Opposition lawmaker Kubatbek Baibolov was elected its chairman.

This appears to me to be the beginning of the end of presidentialism in Kyrgyzstan, if this constituent assembly creates the kind of constitution that I think they will. Presidential systems have been notorious for their authoritarianism in the former USSR states, and it is this kind of system which has allowed Bakiev to stall in the reforms he proposed back during the Tulip Revolution.

Parliamentary democracy has shown to be a great stabilizer for newly emerging democracies, one which will hopefully lead to the pluralism of power that the protestors of looking for. Pushing an authoritarian executive to the side would pave the way for both stability and development. There would no longer be a need for these kinds of street protests. It’s only too bad that it’s taken a year and a half for this to go through.