Dr. Dosmukhamedov, what is the real reason for your departure from the country? After a while it seems that real reasons have nothing to do with the party's registration.
From the legal point of view, registration documents are now under consideration in the Ministry of Justice. We were not refused directly, but even after the Founding Convention of the Atameken Party the registration still was not completed. It was also confirmed in the documents released by the official delegation from Kazakhstan at the Warsaw conference last year organized by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. In the Central election Commission's document, it said that no unauthorized citizens received party registration. I'm still the Chairman, authorized by the Founding Convention to represent the Atameken Party, registration of which is one of the terms for Kazakhstan's chairmanship of the OSCE.
The basic reason is that Atameken is not the usual project of the President's Administration aimed at imitating democratic progress in Kazakhstan, and demonstrating to the Western world the splendid growth of democratic society. After the Founding Convention when the bird was let out of the cage and all documents necessary for registration were presented, and after all the hard work in every region of the country, the media started spreading information about the new party (which had become widely talked about). The authorities urgently needed to run the unexpected party aground.
As you remember from my interviews last year, I had long talks with Minister [Yermukhamet] Yertysbayev and the President's son-in-law [Timur] Kulibayev. I rejected demands to sign an oath of loyalty, swear my personal allegiance to the President on the Koran, and to introduce the positions of co-chairmen through which they could control me in the future. After that I received friendly advice "to be careful on my house porch late at night". In private talks, Yertysbayev told me that the reason for non-registration of the party was that President Nazarbayev - a man without a university education or even any decent secondary-school education - suffers from a certain phobia: in politics he is afraid of young, well-educated and independent people with deep knowledge of the Western system. The Minister of Justice also told me that a party could be registered only on the President's order. In other words, the reason is the reluctance to modernize the political system, which would turn it into a real living civil society with the state as a servant instead of a feudal lord as it is today.
After the Founding Convention, we observed how every day the totalitarian government began to show its true face. After this, it was important for me to protest publically, instead of just being a fly buzzing around helplessly under a glass for the amusement of those who ordered the destruction of the houses of Oralmans (ethnic Kazakhs who recently returned to Kazakhstan), those who hijack the business of successful entrepreneurs lacking support from the President's family, and those who demand bribes from contractors of national companies and money for so-called "ruling party electoral fund". even the death of their countrymen is no more than a mere statistic for them. Ranked among Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people (and still unable to explain why they are listed there), they live in another world of personal planes and gorgeous houses in Italy and England, while their wives - loathing our poor and miserable maternity homes - go to Switzerland to deliver their offspring. I am not going to play the role of a fly that might be killed in our country at any moment. Thank God, there is a Western democratic community, and the press which has the ability to transform this horde of flies - as we are now, living this way thanks to the repressive state apparatus that has existed for the last 17 years - into a nation in which politicians are not bound by any loyalty oaths to a feudal and repressive system.
During the last days of your stay in Kazakhstan, you said that people were following and even spying on you. Can you guess who is behind it and why this supervision was organized?
In our totalitarian country, as in Stalin's time, the Committee of National Security carries out this work, though nowadays there are some peculiarities. even [Imangali] Tasmagambetov's son-in-law, Kenes Rakhishev has a security service within his corporate holdings. He referred to it when he recommended that one of the assistants of an emirati Sheikh stop complaining to me about demands for a bribe for issuing a hunting license in Kazakhstan. The Sheikh, as a charitable gift, sincerely wished to build a modern maternity clinic, but this chance was rejected by Timur Kulibayev, Kenes Rakhishev and Minister of Agriculture [Akhmetzhan] Yesimov's son-in-law Galymzhan Yesenov, who was entrusted to lead the negotiations by Yesimov. They are responsible for the new-born babies' deaths and the mothers' grief because they have to deliver children in primitive, unequipped clinics, having no opportunity to do so under better conditions. I also think that our Parliament must revise the law on private security services in the context of the recent attempt to murder Yermurat Bapy right after his newspaper's critical reports on Timur Kulibayev.
After your former colleagues left you, will you still use the Atameken name? How do you judge what they did?
This question is not quite correct. There is an Atameken Political Council decision to expel from the party those members who, in spite of the decision rendered by the only legitimate Founding Convention, arbitrarily try to unite the party with other parties. [Maksut] Narikbayev and [Alikhan] Baimenov - who have tried to hijack the Atameken Party while I am compelled to be away from Kazakhstan and join our party to their pro-presidential parties - have well-known reputations as the energizer bunnies of the political process in our country. The President's Administration is a true organizer of the plot against our party.
It is not possible to call secret informants of the Committee of National Security my colleagues, nor the people who had been in the Ak Zhol Party but became so corrupt as to extort a few thousands dollars to buy their supportive voice, nor people suffering from illnesses that render their minds so unbalanced that they need a stem-cell serum made from the umbilical cords of unborn babies - prohibited in Western countries. These so-called colleagues - who contributed nothing to the party's budget at the most difficult time - were introduced into it by the Committee of National Security in order to stab us in the back at a suitable moment, which they have already tried to do though with no result on the eve of the parliamentary elections last year. But they do not foresee that the voiceless nation will arise, and they will have to face the indignation of thousands of ordinary citizens who trust Atameken, and who are tired of being deceived cattle on the playground of authority.
What is your occupation nowadays? After your departure, you said that there would not be any problem with your employment, particularly in Western universities. Are you occupied with teaching?
As before, I'm engaged in politics. Last month, I made 10 trips to Western European countries and held meetings with politicians, deputies, European journalists and international organizations. Besides, I participate in research and consulting projects for Western universities. My book in English will soon be published. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time for teaching.
You used to say before that you intend to influence the internal political situation in Kazakhstan from abroad. Are you still eager to do it? Are you still in politics? Do you meet emigrants from Kazakhstan like Akezhan Kazhegeldin, Serik Medetbekov, Rashid Nugmanov, Rakhat Aliyev?
The nature of your questions suggests the informational isolation and censoring that keep Kazakhstan's mass media under strict control. Lately, I have had to communicate more with Western journalists than with journalists from Kazakhstan. Censorship provides false information about my activities - or rather produces an impression of stagnation. But really, all my activity since my departure from Kazakhstan has pertained to politics.
Last year for the first time in 17 years of diplomatic relations between Great Britain and Kazakhstan, Conservative MPs inquired into the country's government concerning Kazakhstan. These were questions about human rights, shadow money transferred from Kazakhstan into English banks, our party's registration, and about a young political prisoner in Kazakhstan. As a result of the inquiry, he was released on probation. Another example, as you remember, the Russian Party,
