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NUR-SULTAN (TCA) — Kazakhstan’s National Bank has issued freshly minted coins with engraved texts in the country’s new Latin-based alphabet, RFE/RL reported.
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ALMATY, Kazakhstan (TCA) — Kazakhstan’s Nationwide Social Democratic Party (ZhSDP), the only registered party in the country that positions itself as opposition to the government, has decided to boycott an early presidential election scheduled for June 9, RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service reported.
The decision was made at a party congress in Almaty on April 26 to protest what party members say is the participation of “puppet” candidates proposed by pro-government parties to help secure an election victory for Kazakhstan’s interim President Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev from the ruling Nur Otan party.
A ZhSDP statement declares that fielding a candidate in the election would damage the party’s reputation because it could be seen as a political group that is controlled or being used by the government.
Kazakhstan’s ruling Nur Otan party nominated Tokayev as its candidate for the presidency on April 23.
Five other parties known to be loyal to Nur Otan nominated relatively unknown political figures the same day.
Tokayev, a former diplomat who had been the speaker of Kazakhstan’s Senate, became interim president on March 20 — one day after the country’s long-time leader Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his resignation from the presidency.
Tokayev announced on April 9 that a snap presidential election would be held on June 9 — moving forward the date of the next scheduled presidential election by nearly one year.
Critics, including the ZhSDP, say the snap election is aimed at shortening the political transition and decreasing the chances of instability following the resignation of Nazarbayev, who had ruled Kazakhstan in an autocratic manner since 1989 when it was still a republic of the former Soviet Union.
The announcement of the snap election just two months before the actual vote has given Tokayev’s potential opponents little time to mount a campaign, greatly reducing their chances of becoming known by voters in a country where the political opposition has been marginalized and politics is still dominated by Nazarbayev.
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TASHKENT (TCA) — During their meeting in Beijing on April 25, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev and China President Xi Jinping expressed shared interest in bringing the volume of China-Uzbekistan trade up to US $10 billion in the coming years, the press service of the Uzbek president reported.
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BEIJING (TCA) — Chinese President Xi Jinping says his plan to recreate the old Silk Road is designed to increase and enhance international trade cooperation, as he bid to reassure critics of the $1 trillion infrastructure project, RFE/RL reported.
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MOSCOW (TCA) — Officials from China, Russia and the United States on April 25 reached consensuses on various aspects of the Afghanistan issue including sovereignty, internal dialogue, terrorism, military withdrawals and smuggling, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
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BISHKEK (TCA) — It is estimated that about half of the world’s obsolete pesticides can be found in the former Soviet Union, with many of them stored throughout Central Asia. As an important centre for agriculture, particularly cotton production, the region was a heavy user of pesticides. What remain are inappropriate burial sites, regulatory and management deficits, and other issues, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) says.
