good life after Soviet times. The Khan put forward only one condition - enrich yourself as much as you like but leave politics to me. In the list of the richest people in the world published in Forbes magazine, there are eight citizens of Kazakhstan, among them President Nazarbayev's daughter Dinara and his son-in-law Timur Kulibayev. For the last couple of years, the middle class in Kazakhstan has grown so that it now comprises almost a quarter of the population.
"Oil is our blessing as well as our curse", says Dr. Dosmukhamedov. "The state and the economic system of Kazakhstan are built on oil, and this is the only reason Kazakhstan is staying afloat. It is the main way in which organisations prosper, and it causes some Western politicians to loose both their sanity and their moral conscience. They want to act as teachers of democracy and freedom when they arrive in Kazakhstan, but they soon forget all about this and become strictly interested in petrodollars. For them, Kazakhstan is just a colony of raw materials. They are not embarrassed by a dictator, as long as he sells them oil".
President Nazarbayev has always been dreaming about Kazakhstan as the first post-Soviet country to receive the OSCE chairmanship. Western leaders were against it, saying that the OSCE can't admit as a leader a country that has never held fair elections, and whose leader supports the so-called Chinese way of development, according to which profit maximization prevails over civil freedom.
President Nazarbayev's efforts to obtain the chairmanship of the OSCE were even supported by former U.S. President Bill Clinton after his visit to Astana. President Nazarbayev contributed generously to his fund. The American government also changed its point of view after President Nazarbayev's visit to Kennebunkport, the seaside summer retreat of his old friend George H.W. Bush.
The dream of the Kazakh Khan came true last year in the autumn. OSCE member countries conditionally decided that in 2010 Kazakhstan will chair the organization. To fulfill this honour, President Nazarbayev will have to carry out democratic reforms that the Kazakh Khan has solemnly promised.
In particular, he promised to reform the constitution by limiting the President's power, so that it would correspond more closely to European constitutions. President Nazarbayev also promised to allow the registration of opposition parties that emerged without his consent.
After this, however, the deputies in Parliament decided to repeal the constitutional limitation on the term of the President, on the ground that President Nazarbayev's merits legitimized his ruling the country for as long as he likes.
Murder? Suicide!
Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov notes that the required 50,000 signatures were collected to register the centre-right Atameken Party, in accordance with the Political Parties' Law. By the end of 2006, all necessary documents had been submitted to the Ministry of Justice. But a month later, authorities stated that the registration process had stopped, so the government neither consented to nor rejected the party's request. When he wanted to take part in the popular television program Serious Talk, the program was withdrawn from the air at the last moment. Besides Atameken, one other opposition party is waiting for registration - Alga (Onward). "In striving for the chairmanship in the OSCE, our regime has deceived the West. It has promised everything that the democratic community wanted to hear but it intended to do everything as it liked", states Dr. Dosmukhamedov. He emphasized that before the country obtains the chairmanship in the OSCE, it is necessary to make President Nazarbayev fulfill all that he has promised.
The Kazakh Khan had not foreseen that wealth, which it seems should only have distracted vigilant citizens, suddenly also gave them the feeling of independence. More self-assured and believing in their luck, oligarchs were annoyed with the omnipotence of the President.
Before Dr. Dosmukhamedov passed the registration documents to the Ministry of Justice and his party's registration application at the end of 2006, an ex-Minister of President Nazarbayev, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, had died in his house in Almaty. Before his death, he had accused the President of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from American oil companies. expelled from the government, he joined the opposition and promised to reveal the compromising documents concerning President Nazarbayev. Officially it was announced that Nurkadilov had committed suicide, but that did not explain why he was shot twice in the breast and then received another shot to the head.
Some months later in a car on the roadside near Almaty, the corpse of another Kazakh opposition leader was found. This time the public prosecutors expressed the opinion that Altynbek Sarsenbayev was killed in a hunting accident, though it is not clear again why the corpse was found in a car together with the driver and the security guard, both of whom had had their hands bound and had been shot in the back of the head.
After the murders, Dr. Dosmukhamedov left for Europe. "I will come back when the party is registered", Dosmukhamedov said. "This would be the proof that something has really been changed in Kazakhstan".
Godfather-in-law
Last year, turmoil gripped the family of President Nazarbayev's son-in-law, Rakhat Aliyev, husband of his elder daughter Dariga, who announced that after Nazarbayev's retirement he would apply for the President's post. When he learned that Khan Nazarbayev was not thinking about retiring, he called him a dictator. President Nazarbayev in turn deprived his son-in-law of the post of ambassador in Vienna, and ordered his daughter to divorce her husband immediately. He also announced an international search for his son-in-law who, so the authorities explained, took advantage of the kindness and trust of the sovereign and had created a Mafia organization. In January, a Kazakhstan court sentenced him in a sentia to long-term imprisonment for thefts and kidnapping. In June, Aliyev announced he would publish a book about President Nazarbayev in which the whole world would find out who was the true Mafioso. The book exposing the Kazakhstan sovereign will be published under the title Godfather-in-Law.
On the advice of his entourage, in April President Nazarbayev had an interview with a correspondent from the Reuters news agency. A long, sincere conversation with a journalist from one of the most popular news services, as they thought, should have restored the President's image that had been damaged by the scandals and accusations.
On a question about the causes of the slow political changes in Kazakhstan, President Nazarbayev replied that changes in politics must take place only after economic reforms. Otherwise the whole process would be turned into chaos. President Nazarbayev rejected the thoughtless copying of the democratic Western model.
"East of us is located China, Northward - Russia, in the South - the Muslim world", said President Nazarbayev. "None of them is rushing to be like the European models. They have their own traditions and conditions. We should also think about this in Kazakhstan".
"In this case, he should have been asked why he longed so much to head the most important European organization, OSCE", Dr. Dosmukhamedov commented ironically.
Interviewed by Wojciech Jagielski
I AM NEVER GOING TO PLAY THE ROLE OF A SWATTED FLY
Central Asia Monitor (Kazakhstan)
30 May 2008
Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov is well known to our readers, first for the Atameken Union and then for the party of the same name. The party's political future seemed to be smooth sailing: intelligent and sound policies, sensible and suitable programs and projects. But suddenly everything changed nearly a year ago. Dr. Dosmukhamedov now lives in exile, protesting the government's refusal to register his party. Another reason he lives abroad is to provide for his personal safety, about which Dr. Dosmukhamedov has considerable doubts. His party colleagues disapproved of his leaving the country, but this fact did not prevent Dr. Dosmukhamedov from proceeding with his plan to foster democracy among the Kazakh people. The hero of the past year now has the floor.
