Candidate for the President of Kyrgyzstan and former acting head of state Sadyr Zhaparov spoke out for the preservation of the official status of the Russian language in the republic.
"The proposal (to deprive Russian of the official status - ed. TASS) is completely wrong. The Russian language is one of the six languages used on UN tribune. Besides, it is the language that unites peoples and that we have been using for centuries. <...> Russian must remain an official language [in Kyrgyzstan]," Zhaparov wrote on Friday on his Facebook page.
The initiative to deprive Russian of the status of an official language in the republic was taken on Thursday by a member of the constitutional meeting Sadirdin Toraliev. However, the other 79 representatives of this collegial body did not support his initiative.
The state language in Kyrgyzstan is Kyrgyz, and Russian has the status of an official language. This norm is fixed in the republic's constitution.
Zhaparov resigned his powers of acting president and prime minister of Kyrgyzstan on November 14 due to his intention to run for the presidency in the forthcoming early elections of the head of state to be held on January 10. At the same time, a referendum on amending the constitution is planned. At the moment 47 people are applying for the post of president.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Abylai Saralaev / TASS
Based on materials from TASS