It looks too much like a sunflower: Kyrgyzstan's parliament approved on Wednesday changing the design of the national flag so that it actually resembles a sun, which authorities say “shines” on this Central Asian country.
The flag, depicting a yellow circle with wavy rays and in the center a spherical detail of a traditional Kyrgyz nomadic yurt on a red background, makes an “ambiguous” impression, according to Nurlanbek Shakiyev, speaker of the parliament and one of the authors of the bill, this design to change.
Many residents of this former Soviet republic, which is in economic difficulties, often mistook this circle of rays for a sunflower, an interpretation that was unpleasant to the authorities, he explained.
The bill submitted by Mr. Shakiyev in September proposes changing the shape of the rays on the flag so that it “clearly resembles the rays of the sun.” It was approved by 59 MPs against five who voted against.
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov unconditionally supported the change in the design of the flag.
“If the new version of the flag is approved, we will no longer be dependent,” he said in late October. “Until now, we in our society believed that our flag looked like a sunflower and therefore the country could not recover.”
“From now on, everything will be as if the sun is shining for us and smiling at us,” he said, urging his compatriots to hope that Kyrgyzstan “will now be an autonomous and developed country.”
However, not all Kyrgyzstan people liked the idea, as dozens of people took to the streets in the capital Bishkek in early December to protest against the flag change.