“It’s a great honor for me to be the nationally elected head of state in the year of the 20th anniversary of our independence and continue the mission of leader of our unique, multiethnic homeland,” Nazarbayev intoned triumphantly, after kissing the Kazakh flag and taking oath standing on a piece of white felt, as the Kazakh khans of old once did.
In a ceremony broadcast live on television, Nazarbayev seemed keen to emphasize his long rule in a year notable for sweeping long-serving Arab autocrats from power, reminding his adoring public of the strides made since 1991. “We were in the ruins of a collapsed superpower… Today it’s hard to imagine that all this was just 20 years ago,” he said.
A huge crowd welcomed the Leader of the Nation as he arrived at the Palace of Independence, and inside the hall a “who’s who” of Kazakhstan solemnly watched the ceremony.
Among them were many of those sometimes tipped to one day succeed the 70-year-old president, including Kayrat Kelimbetov, chairman of the Samruk-Kazyna sovereign wealth fund, and Kazakhstan’s two most powerful mayors, Imangali Tasmagambetov of Astana and Akhmetzhan Yesimov of Almaty.
Presidential candidates normally choose to campaign in elections on their home turf, but Kazakhstan's leader likes to stand out from the crowd. Disdaining the campaign trail at home as he heads for victory on April 3, Nursultan Nazarbayev is wooing a foreign audience instead.
Astana's PR machine’s been in overdrive ahead of the election: Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev hailing “Nazarbayev’s rich political and life experience, bright charisma, strategic vision of a creative leader, rare inner integrity and adherence to principles” to New Europe magazine was a particular gem.
The latest outpouring, in The Washington Post, is penned by Nazarbayev himself and trumpets, the headline says, “Kazakhstan's steady progress toward democracy.”
“[W]e are progressing steadily on the path of democratic reform,” writes Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan for two decades -- critics say with an iron fist; supporters see it more as firm paternalism.
The progress Nazarbayev discerns isn’t always visible to the naked eye. Political reforms of recent years have included exempting Nazarbayev personally from constitutional term limits (otherwise he wouldn’t have been standing in Sunday’s election at all) and granting him the title of Leader of the Nation, with special powers and privileges including the threat of jail for anyone who ventures to criticize the esteemed ruler.
With plans afoot for Kazakhstan’s notoriously modest Leader of the Nation to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Astana watchers are getting a creeping sense of déjà vu. After all, this is the third time that the country’s long-serving president has been at the center of a Nobel nomination bid.
This ambitious attempt comes from the Kazakh-led World Assembly of Turkic Peoples. Its chairman, Yermentay Sultanmurat, has got big plans for his president. He sees Nazarbayev as one of the world’s greatest peacemakers, fit to join the likes of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sultanmurat can list many presidential achievements that make Nazarbayev a suitable bearer of the Nobel legacy. They include peacemaking in Kyrgyzstan, which might come as a surprise to the people of that country in the face of the bitter divisions between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities following June’s deadly ethnic clashes.
He also cited Nazarbayev’s contribution to nuclear disarmament and his “weighty role in the development of the countries of Central Asia and the Turkic world.” Then, casting around for more reasons to promote his president as a Nobel candidate, Sultanmurat made the lofty – and rather bizarre – claim that Nazarbayev’s brainchild capital, Astana, is the “spiritual capital of the world.”
His bid follows two previous attempts to elevate the president into the ranks of Nobel winners. In 2008 two US congressmen made a bid to have Nazarbayev nominated for the prize, citing his decision to give up nuclear weapons. Not to be outdone, the pro-presidential Assembly of People of Kazakhstan has also mooted the idea in the past.
