Kazakhstan moved a step closer January 14 toward extending the rule of President Nursultan Nazarbayev with a parliamentary vote overriding a presidential veto. The move means that a referendum to extend Nazarbayev’s presidential term to 2020 will proceed. Experts expect voters to overwhelmingly approve the extension.
As Kazakhstan ended its chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and passed the baton to Lithuania on January 13, Astana celebrated what it portrayed as a job well done during a challenging year.
One question is on practically everyone’s lips these days in Kazakhstan’s two main cities, Almaty and Astana: “Will he or won’t he?” They, of course, are thinking about Nursultan Nazarbayev, and whether he will, despite his own veto of a parliamentary resolution, end up becoming the country’s de-facto president-for-life.
It’s been a great year for Kazakhstan’s Leader of the Nation, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Not only has Astana’s chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) given him the chance to strut the world stage, he’s also done pretty well at home as the love of his people has overflowed into ever more powers for the already omnipotent president.
Not content with a bill passed this year granting Nazarbayev the title of Leader of the Nation with accompanying special rights and powers, a group of public figures in eastern Kazakhstan now wants to save the president the bother of standing for re-election.
The snappily named “initiative group on conducting a national referendum to extend the powers of the first president of Kazakhstan” met December 23 in the eastern city of Oskemen (also known as Ust-Kamenogorsk), and the 850 presidential fans present voted unanimously in favor of holding a referendum to extend Nazarbayev’s term of office to 2020, KazTAG reports. The vote has no legal force, but could provide a springboard to allow this “grassroots” idea to gather momentum.
The president’s services to Kazakhstan are so great that he shouldn’t have to face the formality of allowing the public a say in whether he stays in office, his enchanted electorate suggested.
The bid is backed by some well-known figures, including Mayor of Almaty Akhmetzhan Yesimov – who described it as “important not for Nursultan Nazarbayev but for the whole of society, for the whole of Kazakhstan” – and poet Olzhas Suleymenov.
Kazakhstan offers far and away the most business-friendly climate in Central Asia, but even so, half of the entrepreneurs running small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are struggling to get by, a new poll shows. They face all kinds of hurdles, from financial difficulties to recalcitrant officials – and yet a majority of these resilient businesspeople remain upbeat about the future.
The study of 2,000 entrepreneurs was conducted by the Almaty-based BISAM Central Asia center, which researches the business climate. “Half of entrepreneurs are balancing on the brink of survival,” BISAM Central Asia’s president, Leonid Gurevich, told a conference on SMEs on December 14.
The news will come as a disappointment to the state's Damu entrepreneurship development fund, which supports small businesses and which commissioned the poll. Damu has stepped up assistance to SMEs in recent years due to the global financial crisis, offering micro-credits and preferential loans, but the poll indicates that many entrepreneurs are still fighting against the odds to survive.
Some 40 percent would like to overhaul and modernize their businesses but lack the funds to do so. Small farmers are worst off, with 65 percent saying that they only have enough funds to keep afloat or that their businesses are in critical condition.
Astana regularly touts Moscow as its chief foreign policy ally, and for ordinary Russians the feeling appears to be mutual. Not only do Russians prize Kazakhstan as their most reliable partner in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); they also can’t get enough of its Leader of the Nation, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Kazakhstan topped a recent poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, with 37 percent of the 1,600 Russians polled naming the giant Central Asian country as their most reliable CIS partner on the international stage. The figure is up from 31 percent last year.
Nazarbayev topped the poll of CIS leaders as well, with 32 percent describing him as the one they trusted most (Russia and its leaders were not included in the polling questions). The largest number of Russians (34 percent) also named Kazakhstan as the most stable and successful country among Moscow’s CIS partners.
Kazakhstan’s standing in the minds of Russians has been helped by the chill in relations between Moscow and Minsk. Belarus was last year’s favored partner among ordinary Russians, with 43 percent naming “Europe’s last dictatorship” as their country’s most reliable partner. That’s plunged to 23 percent this year, second place behind Kazakhstan, while Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rating as most trusted CIS president has dropped from first in 2009 at 33 percent to third in 2010 at 16 percent.
A labyrinthine dispute over a company with vast gold-mining assets in Kazakhstan, which had tarnished the country's investment image and pitted a couple of powerful Russian oligarchs against a rich and influential Kazakh family, has finally been settled. The Kazakh family has outshone Russia’s big businessmen, taking back a company it sold to them before having second thoughts.
According to a statement by Russia's Polyus Gold, the Asaubayev family is retaking control of KazakhAltyn, the main operating subsidiary of the KazakhGold firm once owned by the family but snapped up by the Russian gold giant in 2009. Russian oligarchs Mikhail Prokhorov and Suleyman Kerimov took over KazakhGold through Polyus Gold’s acquisition of a 50.1 percent controlling stake in KazakhAltyn. They later increased their share to 65 percent, while the Asaubayevs retained an 8.8 percent interest.
The two companies then planned to carry out a reverse takeover, with London-listed KazakhGold swallowing up Polyus Gold in a deal set to create the largest gold company in the CIS – and get Polyus Gold onto the London Stock Exchange.
Before that could happen the deal went sour, however, generating a stream of lawsuits and a fierce war of words between KazakhAltyn's old Kazakh owners and the new Russian ones.
A geopolitical standoff, involving primarily Russia and the United States, garnered most of the attention at the early December summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
At a wee-hours news conference December 3 in Astana, Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, tried to put a positive spin on what turned out to be a loopy Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe summit.
Bitter divisions between member states are hampering agreement on the wording of a declaration due to be signed within a few hours as a summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) enters its second and last day in the Kazakh capital.
Host President Nursultan Nazarbayev opened this morning’s proceedings urging delegates not to miss a historic opportunity to reshape the future of the OSCE and to “overcome disagreements and reach consensus.”
No official statement has been made on what those disagreements are. But off the record, delegates are saying that yesterday’s acrimonious exchanges between Russia and the United States over Georgia and splits over the OSCE’s approach to democracy and human rights are at the heart of the wrangling.
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, who is chairing the first session on December 2, said negotiators were still working on the wording of the document. At this late stage, that implies that there are some serious hurdles to overcome before the Astana declaration can be signed – if it is.
Summit proceedings opened December 2 at 10:00 Astana time and are due to close at 12:30, so frantic delegates will have to pull out all the stops behind the scenes to come up with a wording that suits everyone.
Astana has always acknowledged that Russia is its chief foreign policy ally, but it also enjoys warm relations with the United States that were hailed by Hillary Clinton on December 1. Now’s the time for Kazakhstan to put into play its “multi-vector” foreign policy, which is based on forging good relations with all major world players, and demonstrate its vaunted bridge-building role within the OSCE.
