At a recent conference in Washington commemorating Kazakhstan’s 20th anniversary of independence, speaker after speaker praised President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s talent for “statecraft.”
Officials in Kazakhstan are trying to listen to disgruntled residents of Zhanaozen, the scene of violent clashes last December that left at least 17 dead. The problem is, goodwill ambassadors from Astana are not saying the things that seething citizens want to hear.
The United States is gently pressing Kazakhstan to do more to reform its political system in the wake of parliamentary elections that failed to meet international standards and a violent crackdown on labor protests in the country's oil-rich western region.
Kazakhstan’s parliamentary election was billed as a prelude to political liberalization in the energy-rich Central Asian state. But just the opposite has occurred in the days since the voting.
The conduct of Kazakhstan's recent parliamentary elections got a tepid review from an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe-sponsored observer mission.
The government of Kazakhstan has spent substantial sums on global public relations, striving to shape an image as a modern, open and investment-friendly nation by relying on a stable of top-tier public relations firms and international advisors.
Kazakhstan’s ruling Nur Otan party has won its expected landslide in a January 15 parliamentary election – a month after at least 17 protestors were shot dead by security forces – and will be joined in parliament by two other parties, preliminary results show.
Voters in Kazakhstan will head to the polls on January 15 in a parliamentary election that is sure to be the tensest in the country’s two decades of independence.
Kazakhstan is marking its 20th anniversary of independence on December 16-17 with great fanfare. At the same time, it’s commemorating another anniversary, albeit more somberly: a quarter-century ago the Zheltoksan (December) uprising left a profound imprint on the national psyche.
