Bishkek’s Ala-Too square has been cleared of almost all traces of the opposition tent city after clashes with riot police. Depending on whose reports you read, the violence was instigated by government thugs lobbing rocks or the opposition protestors. At the square however, shopkeepers I talked to claim their windows were smashed by riot police, with reports of 1,000 strong gangs of provocateurs bussed in from the south.
It remains to be seen how western media will decry this as a blow to regional democracy initiatives and if the opposition will be cowed into submission. 
A number of protestors wandering around the square with mattresses insisted that a regrouping tomorrow would happen, while also suggesting that they might not live to see tommorow. Well past midnight, Parliament is currently holding an emergency session.
Even with plenty of local reports depicting recent protests being a “grab for power” aided by thousands of paid supporters, such an abrupt ending casts a dim outlook for the upcoming months, as Daniel Sershen reports on Eurasianet.
Whatever the cause of the confrontation, the results are clear: the opposition has lost any leverage that it had against Bakiyev in the constitutional debate. Some observers now say the president has no incentive to enter into deal with his critics that would alter the existing balance of power. If anything, observers now expect Bakiyev to press a political offensive that aims to restore presidential authority to the level that existed before the first round of constitutional protests last November.
