ASTANA (TCA) — Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev on September 8 relieved Prime Minister Karim Masimov of his duties and appointed him chairman of the National Security Committee, the presidential press service said.
First Deputy Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Bakhytzhan Sagintayev, has become temporary Prime Minister.
Masimov, 51, was the longest-serving prime minister of Kazakhstan. He had served as prime minister from April 2014, and held the same post from January 2007 to September 2012.
Masimov, an ethnic Uighur, studied in Russia, China, and the United States, and speaks Chinese, Arab, and English in addition to Russian and Kazakh.
Masimov’s dismissal appears to be linked to his eyebrow-raising self-promotion on social media in recent months. Masimov’s sudden activity on the Internet was considered by many observers to be a blatant attempt to promote himself across the country, RFE/RL reports.
Photographs of Masimov doing physical exercise appeared on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. One photograph that showed him bicycling through the capital, Astana, with his cabinet members attracted wide derision after people poked fun of his mismatched socks.
Another showed Masimov wearing hockey skates and pads, standing on a rink alongside his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev.
Masimov also announced via the Internet that he asked Medvedev to return the skulls of Kazakh national liberation movement leaders of the 19th and 20th centuries from a St. Petersburg museum, something that Kazakh nationalists have called for years.
Masimov also started an initiative on Twitter for Kazakhs to share ideas about the upcoming 25th anniversary of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union. The effort, however, ended after many used it to criticize the government for the worsening economic situation caused by the abrupt fall in the oil price the last two years.
At his new post as the National Security chief, Masimov will have to deal with an upsurge of Islamic terrorism faced by Kazakhstan over recent months.
