Amanat Adilet Merger as Kazakhstan Prepares for New Parliament

Kazakhstan’s long-dominant Amanat party has voted to merge into the newly formed pro-presidential Adilet party, transferring the machinery of the country’s ruling political force into a new vehicle more closely associated with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The move gives Adilet the campaign infrastructure and nationwide network of officials and activists that it lacked as a newly registered party. For Amanat, it offers a way to move beyond a political brand still closely associated with former President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Amanat held a congress in Astana on June 12 that is likely to be remembered as the final meeting of a political organization whose history spans a quarter of a century. For most of that period, the party was known as Nur Otan, the ruling party built around Nazarbayev and chaired by him for much of its existence. The rebrand followed the chaos of January 2022, officially referred to in Kazakhstan as the January Events, when protests triggered by fuel price rises grew into the most serious political crisis in the country’s post-Soviet history. The violence weakened Nazarbayev’s remaining influence and accelerated Tokayev’s effort to distance the political system from the Nazarbayev era. It also made Nur Otan’s association with the former president a political liability. Tokayev took over Nur Otan from Nazarbayev in January 2022. Two months later, the party was renamed Amanat. Tokayev stepped down from the party leadership in April, after Kazakhstan amended its legislation to prohibit the president from being a member of any political party. Since then, Amanat has been led by Yerlan Koshanov, an experienced official and Tokayev ally. At the congress, Koshanov acknowledged that the 2022 name change had failed to remove the party’s association with the previous political era. “Let us be frank,” he said. “Certain associations and assessments related to the party’s past still remain in public consciousness.” Amanat remains politically useful: it has the organization needed to contest elections. But its connection to Nazarbayev’s era sits uneasily with Tokayev’s attempts to present his presidency as a break with the old system. Koshanov told delegates that the country needed “new points of unity” rather than new divisions, and said Amanat should combine its resources with Adilet as part of a single pro-presidential force. Delegates unanimously approved the decision to join Adilet. New Kid On The Block Adilet, meaning “justice,” is a very new party. As previously reported by The Times of Central Asia, it held its founding congress on May 7 and was officially registered by Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Justice on June 1. Its chairman is Aibek Dadebay, a former head of Tokayev’s presidential administration. The party presents itself as a pro-presidential force built around the language of responsibility and reform. On June 14, Adilet held its second congress. Party leader Aibek Dadebay, addressing participants, proposed voting in favor of Amanat joining Adilet, describing it as a decision based on national responsibility and broader state interests rather than narrow party calculations. Delegates approved the merger, confirming that Adilet is less the creation of an...