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UN Office for the Coordination |
KAZAKHSTAN: Year in Review 2005 - Energy brings growth and stability
ASTANA, 11 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - There were few major surprises in oil-rich Kazakhstan this year, where Central Asian expects correctly predicted an easy win for incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev in the 4 December presidential election.
The 65-year-old leader enjoyed approval ratings over 70 percent and had worked hard at liberalising Kazakhstan's economy, despite instances of corruption and cronyism.
According to the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, the former Soviet republic - whose landmass was larger than western Europe's and was blessed with abundant gas, oil, and minerals - had experienced annual growth rates of 10 percent since 2001. Secondly, the largely secular country had avoided the ethnic conflicts, instability and top-down authoritarianism common among neighbours like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Thirdly, political opposition to Nazarbayev's rule had been fractured, disorganised and unable to garner much support outside Almaty, the country's former capital and commercial hub.
Despite that, the president and his men did take heed of the dramatic political changes occurring around them and acted accordingly. Following the Rose and Orange revolutions of Georgia and the Ukraine in 2003 and 2004, and most recently in Kyrgyzstan where protesters in March toppled former Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev, Nazarbayev asserted his defiance in maintaining power.
On 6 January, a court in Almaty ordered the closure of the opposition Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DCK) on charges of "inciting social tension" and "political extremism", much to the chagrin of international rights groups, after a statement by the group denied the legitimacy of the current government, called for protests and civil disobedience and criticised the parliamentary elections of 2004 for their lack of political reform.
But such a call may have been premature. Although the gap between the country's rich and poor had widened recently, salaries, pensions, and stipends were generally paid on time and protest demonstrations were rare, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/EL) reported on 14 November.
According to the World Bank, Kazakhstan's poverty rates had decreased from about 30 percent to about 20 percent from 2001 to 2003, while in the country's old and new capitals - Almaty and Astana - the rate fell to nearly zero by 2003. In rural areas of the vast steppe nation, about 30 percent of the population still subsisted on the poverty level of US $2 per day.
And when political turmoil in Kyrgyzstan began appearing too close for comfort, Nazarbayev, who has ruled the former Soviet republic since 1990, promptly closed the border, indicating a less than confident image than the one he so proudly brandishes in public.
However, as the Economist so accurately explained in April, Kazakhstan's economic strength was also the president's. Given the country's vast energy reserves, despite instances of corruption, many in the middle class had little reason to seek political change; western oil companies and governments even less.
Despite his Soviet credentials, Nazarbayev styles himself as a reform-minded, market-friendly leader, the Council of Foreign Relations observed.
"He was from the beginning one of the most forceful and articulate figures arguing for reconstruction, new ideas, new approaches," the council quoted Scott Horton, a legal expert on Kazakhstan and a lecturer at Columbia University as saying, pointing to the country's early success at privatisation and importing Western market features like a mortgage financial system.
Yet Nazarbayev was also a shrewd politician, the group said. "In terms of political smarts, he's a figure of a different caliber," Horton said. "He's able to take a microphone and project a vision for his country that's a positive and forceful image."
Stability has long been at the core of Nazarbayev's policy from the very beginning, the 14 November RFE/RL report observed, with the country of 15 million largely seen as the most stable in the region.
"It's true that relative to other countries in Central Asia, Kazakhstan does enjoy greater political stability and better economic progress," Tanya Malcolm, a regional expert with the New York-based Euroasia Group was quoted as saying. "Of course, this has much to do with Kazakhstan's revenues from oil and gas. So, while there are obvious problems with poverty, corruption and the lack of political freedom, relative to other countries in Central Asia, Kazakhstan's situation is preferable. And I think, many citizens view Nazarbayev as the best guarantor of that stability and progress."
Indeed, even Nazarbayev's opponents admit the country's economic growth is an undeniable achievement of the current government, while leading activists concede there is a certain semblance of freedom of speech in the country.
"People are not prosecuted for what they say, for the speeches that they deliver at conferences and for what they write. These things are not prohibited or persecuted," Eugeniy Zhovtis, director of Kazakhstan's International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, was quoted by another RFE/RL report immediately after the presidential elections as saying.
Nonetheless, the situation with regard to press freedom and an independent media over the past year has proved less tenable.
"There is, of course, private television and radio - 80 percent of all networks, actually - but the fact that they are private does not mean that they are independent. All these channels either are controlled by the government in some way or another, or take their cues from the government, or indulge in self-censorship," Zhovitis claimed.
Moreover, print media faced even more challenges. In early November, all copies of the opposition weekly "Juma Times” were seized for what authorities said was "deliberately false" information that harmed the reputation of the Kazakh president, RFE/RL said. Opposition newspapers faced repeated harassment and seizure ahead of the vote, which gave Nazarbayev another seven years in office, the report added.
While international observers, including the Office for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), maintained that the December elections were flawed and the opposition movement 'For a Just Kazakhstan' called upon the country's highest court to declare the polls illegal and invalid - the fact that the vast majority of Kazakhs stood behind their president could not be denied.
Even so, questions about the political integrity of the regime fester.
In one incident hinting of political intrigue, the wife of opposition figure and former Almaty mayor Zamabek Nurkadilov rejected official findings that her husband had committed suicide on 12 November by shooting himself twice in the chest and once in the head less than a month before the presidential elections. A one time minister and mayor of Almaty, Nurkadilov had become an outspoken critic of the Kazakh leader and had accused the government of corruption.
Whatever the facts, Kazakhstan, which prefers to compare itself to central and eastern European countries rather than its Central Asian neighbours, is a country with a future brighter than most, but one that must ultimately provide democratic reforms to the ample economic ones it has already sought and succeeded in implementing.
According to a 2005 report by Freedom House, a Washington-based advocacy group promoting the worldwide expansion of political and economic freedoms, Kazakhstan was not free and had a long road ahead. Citizens of the country cannot change their government democratically. The constitution grants the president considerable power over the legislative, the judiciary and local governments, and Nazarbayev continues to enjoy sweeping executive powers and governs virtually unchallenged.
[ENDS]
This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but May not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2006
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