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Elections

New Parliamentary Elections Set in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev continues measures to implement his overarching program of political, economic and social reforms. His most recent step, dissolving the Mazhilis (national parliament) and announcing new elections to be held on 19 March, is expected accelerate their progress. These elections will be the first to take place under the new provisions of the constitution, amended in accordance with a referendum on 5 June 2022 that was backed by 75% of the public. The new system is a qualitatively significant change from the past. It foresees 70 percent of the deputies of the Mazhilis being elected from party lists by proportional allocation, and 30 percent from single-mandate constituencies by majoritarian vote. Many Western countries use this type of “mixed” electoral system, which combines methods of majoritarian and proportional representation. In Kazakhstan, it will also be applied to voting for the maslikhats—representative bodies at the municipal and regional levels—in a 50/50 rather than 70/30 proportion. The reforms also reduce the size of the Mazhilis from 107 to 98 representatives. The implementation of this electoral reform should make the legislative branch more representative on both central and local levels. As Tokayev has explained, it will further “create favourable conditions for the further development of civil society.” The elections “will become the embodiment of the changes taking place in society and will give a powerful impetus to the further modernisation of our political system.” The last parliamentary elections on 13 January 2021 were based upon old rules and structures inherited from the stagnant regime of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev. The reforms will go well beyond the removal of the ex-president’s family from positions of influence and recapturing the state’s stolen wealth. While anti-nepotism and a crackdown on corruption are priorities, Tokayev’s reforms go beyond it and open further vistas for the country’s democratisation. The details of the reforms, as well as the codification of their implementation, show minute attention to optimising the electoral mechanisms for popular participation and facilitating the entry of new actors into national and local politics. Such democratisation can only be built with the recruitment of new elites and “sub-elites” at all levels from central to municipal government. The recruitment of new political actors from civil society will hopefully lead to their participative integration into the political system. This strategy targets the mobilisation of strata of society that have been excluded from the political and public sphere until now. Tokayev’s reforms are creating possibilities and opportunities for this inclusion to take place. Seven parties have been registered under the new electoral rules and the Central Elections Commission expects another two to qualify before the deadline. They will be able to file candidacies if they succeed in holding an election congress and submitting the required package of documents for each candidate from the list. It has been announced that, if necessary, filing deadlines will be extended until every constituency has at least two candidates on the ballot for every post. The ballots will also make it possible to...

Kazakhstan’s progression to a “listening state”

30 December 2022 Kazakhstan had a momentous year in 2022. It started with the January unrest, when thousands of citizens went into the streets in peaceful rallies against a sudden sharp increase in prices of the liquefied gas they used in their homes. These rallies turned into a mass protest against the legacy of the regime of Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had failed to give the people a voice and listen to their legitimate needs. What started out as a dangerous and tragic affair, however, soon turned into a real opportunity for the country’s democratic future. The big shift from Nazarbayev to Tokayev While the entrenched business elites around Nazarbayev ruled the country for over three decades, discontent grew among the broader population who perceived an economic class bias against them. Tokayev began weakening the power of Nazarbayev and his hangers-on after he became president in 2019; and in 2020, he began to dismantle the Nazarbayevite oligarchy. After Tokayev removed Nazarbayev’s eldest daughter, Dariga, from her post as Speaker of the Senate and cancelled a state contract worth millions of dollars to another daughter, Dinara, the Nazarbayevite elites became alarmed and began to view Tokayev as an existential threat to their continued power. Three days into the January events, security forces controlled by Nazarbayevite cliques, and led by National Security Committee head Karim Massimov, hijacked the protests. Using their own criminal provocateurs, they deliberately turned the peaceful protests violent and attempted to stage a coup d’état. They raided armouries and stormed government buildings in a co-ordinated effort to push Tokayev from power. After order was restored, both Nazarbayev and Massimov were ousted from all their official duties, opening the way for an ambitious drive to transform the country’s social, economic and political system through a series of reforms. What is a “listening state”? The concept of the “listening state” goes beyond Gorbachev’s glasnost. In English, “glasnost” translates as “openness” or “transparency”, but in Russian, the meaning is more nuanced. The word comes from the noun golos and the suffix -nost. Golos means voice, and -nost means “the quality of”. So, glasnost is the quality of having a voice, as opposed to not having one. Hence, “glasnost” in Russian implies listening to the voice of the public. Glasnost was the foundation of two other Gorbachev reforms: perestroika and democratization. Perestroika meant “restructuring” of the economy, while democratization meant political reforms. Under Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, glasnost, restructuring and democratization were supposed to reinforce one another. All three had to work together for any one of them to succeed completely. The problems that Tokayev confronted when he became president in 2019 broadly resemble the problems that Gorbachev faced in 1985. The Brezhnev regime, which Gorbachev inherited, became referred to as a period of “stagnation”, thus the antithesis of glasnost. Like Brezhnev, Nazarbayev entrenched an elite political class, disconnected from the people, and unwilling to respond to their needs or institute significant reforms. Implementing a “listening state” is the most...

Ablyazov

“This isn’t Moscow” – Kazakh Oligarchs Scuppered in New York Court

In a tale which reaches from “fraud on an epic scale” in the UK to Donald Trump’s shady former business partners, a long-running case against fugitive banker and oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov and his associates recorded another verdict in the New York Southern District court earlier this month. Yet despite having judgments against him totaling $4.9 billion in Britain alone, over a decade since he fled the UK on a fake passport to avoid three concurrent 22-month sentences for contempt of court, the former Minister for Energy, Industry and Trade in Kazakhstan - who has done business with multiple individuals sanctioned in the West - remains a free man, bemoaning his plight to be a case of “political persecution”. In the early days of Wild West capitalism following the collapse of the USSR, Ablyazov abandoned a career as a nuclear physicist to register a company selling fax machines, photocopiers and computers. By 1998, together with a consortium of investors, Ablyazov acquired a loan to buy Bank Turan Alem - later to become known as BTA Bank - in a privatization auction for a cut-price fee of $72 million. In 2005, he became chairman of the bank following the death of his predecessor, Yerzhan Tatishev, whom Ablyazov has been sentenced in absentia to life in prison in his homeland for ordering the murder of. In May 2019, the District Court of Fairfax, Virginia found Ablyazov’s sister, Gauhar Kusainova guilty of handling over $6 million of assets stolen by her brother from BTA. Already, in September 2018 a UK court had fined Ablyazov’s son-in-law, Ilyas Khrapunov, $500 million for helping him breach an asset freezing order. Ilyas is the son of the former Mayor of Almaty, Viktor Khrapunov, who is accused of embezzlement schemes amounting to at least $300 million and comingling funds with Ablyazov in Trump Organization projects. Viktor and his TV anchorwoman wife fled to Switzerland in August 2008 - allegedly loading up a chartered plane with 18 tonnes of art and antiquities - to join Ilyas, who had established an entity called the Swiss Development Group (SDG) - company slogan: “It’s Good to be Swiss”. By 2014, the Kazakh authorities had identified 58 shell companies and subsidiaries said to be controlled by Ilyas, (that’s nothing compared to Ablyazov’s 1000+) one of which was Triadou SPV. In 2016, Nicolas Bourg, the former Director of Triadou testified the Khrapunovs’ had ordered him to move money out of the US after a California lawsuit was filed against them. “Triadou is a shell entity for SDG,” he said. In the latest round of litigation, seeking to discredit the plaintiff’s witnesses, Mr. Roman for the defense spoke of the “lengths to which BTA Bank was prepared to go to find… Mr. Ablyazov’s allegedly stolen money,” and claimed BTA had paid witnesses, including Ilyas former business partners, Frank Monstrey ($25M) and Felix Sater ($2.7M). Roman argued that “Triadou didn't even know about Ablyazov’s freezing orders in London” and Triadou’s rehabilitation of Flathotel, Cabrini, Syracuse and the Tri-County Mall were not the actions of a shell company. “Triadou doesn't have BTA's money”, he concluded;...

Tokayev and Mirziyoyev make “historic breakthrough” in Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan relations

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met with his counterpart from Uzbekistan, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, during his state visit to Tashkent on December 21-22. Some 40 commercial agreements worth $2.5 billion were signed over two days while the two leaders also reached a border-demarcation agreement. Most significantly, the two countries signed the Treaty on Allied Relations. “It would be no exaggeration,” Tokayev said, “to call this document historic [and indeed] a breakthrough.” Background to the Treaty on Allied Relations Tokayev is no stranger to regional diplomacy. In the first decade and a half of his country’s independence, he served as Kazakhstan’s deputy foreign minister, foreign minister, deputy prime minister, prime minister, and state secretary. His leadership in developing the Treaty on Allied Relations with Uzbekistan marks a re-inauguration of autonomous economic co-operation amongst the Central Asian states. It is a promising indicator that they are again tending toward such co-operation outside Russian influence. Post-Soviet co-operation between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan began with the Central Asian Union, created in 1994 and which also included Kyrgyzstan. This organization soon expanded to include Tajikistan and was renamed the Central Asian Co-operation Organisation (CACO). However, after Russia joined CACO a few years later, it was absorbed by the Moscow-directed EurAsian Economic Community (EurAsEC). This killed Central Asia’s first attempt at autonomous economic co-operation and integration. Uzbekistan withdrew from EurAsEC three years later in 2008. In 2015, EurAsEC was superseded by and absorbed into the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), another Moscow-dominated economic integration project designed to maintain and project Russian influence across the former Soviet areas. Of the EEU’s five full members, only two -- Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan -- are from Central Asia while Uzbekistan is an observer. Western sanctions against Russia have further stalled the EEU’s already sluggish integration momentum and confirmed the diversion of its non-Russian members’ trade outside this bloc. What the new Treaty achieves Although the new Treaty is not the equivalent of NATO or the Collective Security Treaty Organisation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, it still constitutes a landmark founding document of autonomous Central Asian co-operation. “Treaties of allied relations” have been signed by other post-Soviet and Asian countries in recent years. These are mainly enhanced agreements that in the Soviet tradition used to be called “friendship and co-operation” agreements. Such agreements leave the door open to deepening co-operation in other spheres. Currency integration was not directly discussed, but this new co-operation will certainly help Uzbekistan to better implement the convertibility of its national currency, the Som. It was only in 2017 that Uzbekistan’s Som became freely convertible into Western currencies. Foreign direct investment in Uzbekistan had suffered greatly from its absence, hindering any dynamic growth during the whole reign of Mirziyoyev’s predecessor Islam Karimov, who led Uzbekistan from 1989 until his death in 2016. There is significant potential for an important future deepening of this newly established bilateral co-operation. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan reached an agreement, for example, to create a working group chaired at the level of their deputy prime ministers,...

Who Should Mediate between Russia and Ukraine? Kazakhstan Could Be the Best Option

As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues to rage, there is little disagreement in the international community that the ever-rising human and material costs make it imperative to find a quick solution to the crisis. There is less agreement on how to achieve this. To swiftly reach a workable peace, the international community and the two fighting sides will need to put their faith in mediation efforts by a trusted, neutral leader. While face-to-face negotiations between representatives from the two countries began in Belarussia and are domiciled in Turkey for the time being, the road to peace remains unclear. Even if a ceasefire is agreed, its sustainability will depend on the demarcation of contested lands, guarantees for sovereignty and security, and helping those dislocated by the conflict. So far, Turkey, Israel and Kazakhstan are among the countries that have declared willingness to mediate negotiations between the sides. Israel maintains good diplomatic ties with both Russia and Ukraine. It also has the trust of the U.S. and other NATO members. It remains neutral in the conflict by furnishing only humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and not weapons systems. As for Turkey, it is a NATO member with profound economic ties to Russia. However, its offer to arbitrate comes against the backdrop of supplying Ukraine with its Bayraktar its TB2 drones, which continue to relentlessly smash Russian tanks, personnel carriers, and supply trucks. Of the three countries, Kazakhstan has perhaps the deepest-rooted interests in a swift and peaceful end to the conflict. Its president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has announced willingness to help: “We call on both states to find a common ground and reach agreements”, he declared at a recent congress of the ruling party Amanat, adding, “For its part, Kazakhstan is ready to provide all possible assistance, including mediation services if necessary”. There are four main reasons that explain why Kazakhstan is likely the best candidate to serve as a mediator: It is highly motivated economically; its foreign-policy framework has positioned it well for such a role; its leadership is unique in terms of its diplomatic prowess; and finally, its bilateral understandings with Ukraine and Russia will it help achieve a successful result. Economic motivation After Ukraine and Russia, from an economic perspective, Kazakhstan is probably the only other country with as great a need for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Sharing a 7,644-kilometre border with Russia, Kazakhstan has suffered significant (albeit for now not overwhelming) collateral damage in its economy. Crippling trade sanctions and severed trade routes have sunk its national currency, the tenge, by 20 per cent. Two-thirds of its oil exports have been throttled at the Russian leg of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. Businesses around the world are de-risking supply chains and might write off swathes of Kazakhstan businesses in fear of possible unspecified ties to sanctioned Russian entities. Given these real reasons, neither Ukraine nor Russia would question Kazakhstan’s earnestness for an expeditious and peaceful resolution. Some observers suspect that Putin might seek to mitigate the impact of sanctions...

Reforms

Kazakhstan to End “Super-Presidential” Model of Government

Earlier today, March 16, 2022, historical new reforms were introduced in Kazakhstan. After 30 years of independence from the Soviet Union, its progress towards democracy went dormant. The reforms announced today, if implemented, will bring Kazakhstan’s democracy standards on par and in some cases above those of the European Union. Tokayev has served as president of Kazakhstan for 2 years. After protests and the attempted coup in January 2022, it became clear that the country needed to introduce fundamental reforms aimed at human rights, openness, welfare and the fight against corruption. Moreover, the tragic events in January were seen in part as a consequence of political "stagnation" which required fundamental changes to resolve. The monopoly in the political sphere led to various social issues and the overall degradation of the state under the increased influence of individuals close to the center of power and oligarchic groups. In today's message to the people of Kazakhstan, Tokayev announced reforms impacting almost all the country’s political institutions. The key powers of the main governmental bodies, such as the presidential office, parliament, local administrations, as well as the judicial and law enforcement systems will be revised. Laws regarding political parties and the electoral process will also be revised. At the same time, President Tokayev emphasized that reforms in Kazakhstan should not be in name only. He declared: “Reforms for the sake of reforms are not needed. The time when we were content with achievements only on paper has passed. It is necessary to eradicate the monopoly in the economy and politics, to move from a super-presidential to a presidential model of government.” According to Tokayev, there will be a significant limitation applied to presidential powers in Kazakhstan. This will entail, the parliament’s authorities will be strengthened. A mixed proportional representation voting system will be introduced amidst a broader plan to reform the parliamentarian system. The entry of new political parties into Kazakhstan’s democratic contest can be expected. Barriers to forming new political parties will be removed. The number of signatures required will be decreased. The registration process will be streamlined. Tokayev also called for a strong parliament that has checks and balances over the authority over the presidency. He lessened the president’s influence over the parliament by reducing the number of appointed senators from 15 to 10. Of the 10 appointees, half will be recommended by the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, a consultative body that develops the policy of friendship and unity between the various nationalities that make up the Kazakh people. The judicial system of Kazakhstan will also be changed, and a Constitutional Court created. Under the new initiative, the president’s appointment of the chairman of the Constitutional Court, and the chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council, will require the consent of the Senate, a move which is aimed at strengthening the independence and transparency of the judiciary. In addition, according to new legislation, the president will be required to terminate any membership in a political party during their term in...