Excerpts from report by Kazakh Khabar TV on 22nd September

The deputy chairman of the opposition Citizen [Azamat] Party of
Kazakhstan, Petr Svoik, who is currently standing in
Kazakhstan's parliamentary elections on 10th October, told
Kazakh television in the 25-minute-long "Hot Spot" programme
that he is convinced that there will be "vote-rigging" during
the elections. He mentioned several politicians who, he
believes, are guilty of irregularities during the election
campaign. He said that his party was in favour of all major
posts being elective ones and was categorically opposed to the
government's sale of its package of shares in Kazakhstan's
valuable Tengizchevroil company. The following are excerpts
from the live interview and phone-in broadcast by Khabar TV on
20th September.

["Hot Studio" presenter Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, director
of the Institute of Strategic Studies of Kazakhstan, captioned]
Good evening, respected TV viewers! There are many television
programmes on different channels with titles like "Everything
but politics", or "20 minutes without politics". Our "Hot
Studio", however, might be called `Nothing but politics',
particularly during the Kazakh parliamentary election campaign.
This is why we are asking those of you in society who are
interested in politics, for whom Kazakhstan's future is dear,
to keep watching our programme! Moreover, Petr Vladimirovich
Svoik, [from] the Citizen [Azamat] Democratic Party, will be
answering your questions on this live broadcast.

[Addressing Svoik] Petr Vladimirovich, those interested in
politics know you well enough. Nevertheless, the election
campaign is under way. So, we have to put our best foot
forward, so to speak. Please give us the biography of Petr
Vladimirovich.

[Over video of Petr Svoik and his people holding a rally,
sitting in an office] Petr Vladimirovich Svoik, born in 1947 in
Leningrad Region [Russia]. Graduated from Almaty Power
Engineering Institiute and did postgraduate studies at the
Moscow Power Engineering Institute, Candidate of Technological
Sciences. He was the director of the Uralsk heating and power
station [West Kazakhstan Region]. In spring 1990, he was
elected a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of Kazakhstan. Together
with Marat Ospanov [now speaker of the Majlis, lower house of
parliament], he organized the group called Democratic
Kazakhstan. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Svoik
managed to work in Moscow as a member of the Interparliamentary
Assembly and a member of the House of Nationalities of the
Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In January 1993, he was appointed
chairman of the Antimonopoly Committee [of Kazakhstan], a
member of the government. However, in spring 1996, Svoik was
sacked. The then prime minister, Akezhan Kazhegeldin,
particularly insisted on Svoik's being sacked. When he was a
minister, Svoik was the chairman of the Socialist Party. Later,
Svoik headed the Azamat [Citizen] Movement which grew into a
political party.

Over the last three and half years Petr Svoik has been in
open opposition. He has demanded the resignation of [former
prime ministers] Sergey Tereshchenko, Akezhan Kazhegeldin and
now [Prime Minister] Nurlan Balgymbayev. He was brought to
court for his participation in unauthorized rallies. While he
was deputy chairman of the Citizen Democratic Party, he decided
to run in the elections, not on the party lists, but in the
single-seat Al Farabi District of Almaty where another 14
people are standing [for the same seat].

[passage omitted; asked by the programme presenter why he
was running in a single-seat district, he said it is because he
lives in the district and people know him very well; there are
many intellectuals and some universities in this district;
asked by his rival and candidate in the existing lower house,
Anvar Batalov, at whose expense Svoik had had treatment on his
leg in Germany once, Svoik said the government had paid for his
treatment.]

[Yertysbayev] Now you and he [Batalov] are rivals, and
are you confident of winning?

[Svoik] I am fully confident.

[Yertysbayev] What is your confidence based on?

[Svoik] My confidence is based on the fact that I did not
nominate myself nor am I a deputy on his own who has been
quickly installing meters in old women's flats or hanging
attractive posters costing tens of thousands of dollars on
billboards announcing that I am a new politician, I am a member
of a team. We are engaged in very rewarding political activity.
We have achieved a great deal within a few years. We are a
party which has been formed. I am a politician who has already
been formed. As long as there is no vote-rigging in the
elections in the Al Farabi district, people know me, I will win
in the first round. However, I repeat, if there is no
vote-rigging.

[Yertysbayev] We will be talking about vote-rigging. Here
is the first call from a viewer. Please?
[u/i caller, by phone] What do you think about the sale of
the state package of shares in the Tengizchevroil and the
resignation of the president of Kazakhoil [National Oil and Gas
Company], Nurlan Kapparov.

[Svoik] Well, we, the Citizen Party, have voiced our
stance on this on air. Incidentally, it is very similar to what
Nurlan Kapparov himself has said. In general, the Tengiz
oilfield is the only serious and profitable oilfield in
Kazakhstan and its value will grow rapidly in the next few
years. To sell these shares today for such a big, but totally
ridiculous sum of money in comparison to what its value might
be in two or four years time, is a kind of venal stupidity, if
not madness. I mean that some property owner will come and make
a profit from it by doing very little for the state, and we are
categorically opposed to this. As far as we know, Kapparov is
also defending the same stance, and this is why he was sacked.
I would like to draw a parallel here with Kalyk Abdullayev, the
[former] governor of South Kazakhstan Region, whom I have known
for a long time now. I think the president [of Kazakhstan,
Nursultan Nazarbayev] himself said, while removing him from his
post, that he [Abdullayev] had ruined everything that he had
been put in charge of. Well, he was removed from his post yet
again without any "rewards", so to speak, for his activities.
Kapparov accepted Kazakhoil when it was in a critical and
loss-making state with huge debts. Kapparov brought Kazakhoil
up to the standard of a sufficiently respectable enterpise.
Well, the right state of affairs was formed there, and this is
not only Kapparov's merit. But Kapparov headed a quite a
promising and profitable production facility in Kazakhstan,
which is almost the only one in this sense. He was removed when
it was at its best.

[Yertysbayev] What is the link between Adullayev and
Kapparov? What did you want to say?

[Svoik] Both of them are appointees. In general, the
Citizen [Azamat] Party is making attempts to make all the main
posts in the country elective ones. An appointee should be
subject to a certain logic. If you have worked in one post
successfully, you get another post which is higher than the
first one. If you ruin something, then you have nothing to do
there any more. So, in both cases, one is rewarded according to
one's merits: in the case of both Abdullayev and Kapparov.
[passage omitted: asked if he had failed to do a good job,
when he was chairman of the Antimonopoly Committee, he said
that he was not a bad chairman but former prime ministers
Kazhegeldin and Tereshchenko prevented him from carrying out
his activity; opponents are rivals from the point of view of
vote-rigging]

Regrettably, I have to come to the conclusion after my
talks with the Central Electoral Committee and the district
electoral commission that preparations for ballot-rigging are
under way. I simply do not know at present in whose favour it
will be rigged, in Batalov's favour or (?Isakhan Alimzhanov)
[another rival of Svoik for the Majlis], but I am confident
today that there will be ballot-rigging.
[passage omitted: the rectors of some universities call on
students to vote for a certain candidate and later they become
Senators]

[Yertysbayev] Petr Vladimirovich, do you understand that
there is a tendency to provide additional material resources
everywhere, and I do not want to say that the Central ELectoral
Commission and the prosecutor's office are closing their eyes
to them. Maybe it is simply difficult to keep track of all
these things?

[Svoik] Look here, please. This is a situation which is
very easy to keep track of. [passage omitted: cites examples,
the law forbids the giving of presents in return for votes.]

[Question on the phone] I am a supporter of Petr
Vladimirovich. I would like - I like his way of approaching
politics - I would like to ask what we, ordinary voters, should
do to ensure that he wins, his party wins, so that his
political approaches gain the upper hand?

[Svoik] Thank you. Here is the answer: you should come to
the polling station. One should duly come. I will tell you that
all the vote-rigging is based on three very simple things. So,
it goes without saying that the first, to be more precise the
main basis for that, is that there are only representatives of
the Fatherland Party and the executive powers in the electoral
commission representing it from top to bottom, but there is no
one else there [from other parties]. So, there are three ways
of vote-rigging: the first is the electoral commissions adding
extra ballot papers to those in the ballot boxes. All these, as
a rule, are kept as a highly confidential document till eight
o'clock in the evening, till the polling station closes. Any
representative of the commission would rather die than show you
the list for you to check it. This is the first vote-rigging
mechanism.

The second one is based on what it was clearly
demonstrated at the elections to the Senate [held on 17th
September] in Almaty. The commission puts the ballot papers not
into the piles that they really should go in, but into the ones
they want them to go in. [passage omitted: refers to
irregularities in the Almaty elections to the Senate]. The
third way of vote-rigging is the following. Everything appears
to have been counted and written on the protocol and the
commission has signed it, but there is no trace of this
protocol in the electoral precincts. In the morning a
completely different protocol with completely different content
appears with ballot papers. The most important way of
combatting vote-rigging is by people coming to the polling
stations. Those who do not come to vote help to vote for
someone else. May be many people do not go to polling stations
because they hate the authorities. So, they do not go there out
of spite. Well, they are only venting spiting upon themselves,
because the authorities themselves love people like that who do
not love them very much. With their help, they [the
authorities] gauge nationwide support.

[passage to end omitted: Svoik says we all hope that these
elections will be fair and honest but any observer should have
the right to check the ballot-papers; host of the programme
wishes luck to Svoik]

Source: Khabar TV, Almaty, in Russian 1400 gmt 22 Sep 99
BBC Mon CAU 240999/** GR/QU