Elections 2023: Kazakhstan stays the kourse
The largest of the Stans, still struggling to shed the dictatorships and corruption that have marred its post-Soviet trajectory, chooses a hand-picked parliament.
Continuing our pledge that Andelman Unleashed will chronicle every presidential or national leadership election around the world, the focus today is on Kazakhstan.
More than four times the size of Ukraine, the world's largest landlocked nation, spanning four time zones, bordering China, Russia and three of its fellow 'Stans, Kazakhstan looms large on the strategic horizon of Central Asia. It is still grappling with the corrupt, autocratic legacy of its 70 years as a republic of the Soviet Union. On Sunday, voters went to the polls in an ostensibly free election. And they voted, though hardly overwhelmingly, for the status quo.
The ruling Amanat party won 53.9% of the votes cast, though only 54% of the electorate showed up according to three exit polls. The Auyl People's Democratic Patriotic Party came in a distant second with 10.9%.
The Amanat party's vote will translate to some 70% of the seats in the Majlis, though six of the seven political parties that fielded candidates won at least one seat. As EuroNews put it, "a timid democratic opening in the authoritarian-inclined Central Asian country."
But the president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, got what he'd intended—overwhelming control of the parliament for the next four years. Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said “contestants campaigned actively and freely.” But when it came to the actual balloting, “While the elections brought elements of competitiveness into the political arena, diverse administrative obstacles negatively affected the equality of campaign opportunities for some self-nominated candidates.”
Tokayev took over the presidency in 2019 from Nursultan Nazarbayev, who'd ruled the country with a corrupt, iron fist for 28 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union that he'd already served with all but unswerving loyalty as a communist apparatchik.
Nazarbayev's leadership dated back to 1984 when he was named prime minister under a communist rule that had been designed since its incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1920 to keep Kazakhstan as a mineral-rich, but industrial backwater of the Soviet empire. In Kazakhstan's first "free" election for a new president in December 1990, Nazarbayev was the only name on the ballot. He remained virtually unchallenged ever since, through five terms as president.
Tokayev was effectively his hand-picked successor, but was able to assume power only after riots in March 2019 forced Nazarbayev to step down, though without relinquishing many of his perks of office—remaining a member of the Constitutional Council and retaining his title of elbasy (leader of the nation, leader of the people) while winning immediate praise for his rule from the likes of Vladimir Putin and a host of other Putin stooges including Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko and most of the other leaders of the Stans.
None of this sat very well with the people of Kazakhstan who continued to see Nazarbayev pulling any number of strings from behind his curtain of retirement while meeting a host of visiting dignitaries who should have been paying court to his nominal successor, Tokayev.
But in 2022, the whole corrupt edifice came crashing down. A sudden, sharp increase in retail gas prices (in a nation that produces more than 1,700 barrels of crude oil per day—the world's 12th largest producer) did not go down well. Nationwide riots broke out, Nazarbayev was forced to relinquish most of his most visible posts. Tokayev imposed price caps on petroleum products and other consumer goods, announced a reform of the constitution, trimming presidential powers, and stood for re-election himself last November. Not surprisingly, he took 81.3% of the vote, but as Andelman Unleashed reported at the time, did express his "intention to move his oil-rich nation closer to the west and away from Russia." And to a degree, he has, while calling Sunday's snap parliamentary election, held two years early, a "reset" of the government.
Nazerbaev had sought through much of his rule what he called a "multi-vectored" foreign policy—meaning keep your friends of all stripes close and your enemies closer. Tokayev seems to have been operating in somewhat similar fashion—though it may at times seem difficult to parse out precisely who is friend and who is foe. His first foreign visit just days after his re-election as president last November was to Moscow, paying court to Vladimir Putin during the height of the Ukraine war.
Then, on February 28, 2023, Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kazakhstan, meeting with Tokayev where he suggested he " looked forward to full implementation of reforms for the benefit of Kazakhstan’s people." Later at a joint press conference with his Kazakh counterpart, Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, Blinken elaborated, "I'm here to underscore that the strong partnership, and in particular the enhanced strategic partnership between the United States and Kazakhstan, is moving forward strongly."
Blinken went on to point out that Kazakhstan was playing host to some 200,000 Russians who had fled their country in the wake of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, while "generously providing food, clothing, medicine, other humanitarian supplies to Ukraine, including setting up yurts of invincibility in Kyiv and Bucha, where Ukrainians can find warmth and respite from the war." And he concluded, perhaps going a trifle overboard, "strongly endorsing the reform agenda that President Tokayev announced last March," though suggesting that he did "look forward to seeing the additional concrete steps Kazakhstan will take to realize that agenda, expanding public participation in the political process, increasing government accountability, curbing corruption, introducing presidential term limits, protecting human rights."
But the keystone of that visit and of Kazakhstan's critical geopolitical position in Central Asia, at least for the moment, is Ukraine. "Kazakhstan has publicly condemned Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and its President has been vocal in calling for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, refusing to play a role in Putin’s attempts to escape international political isolation," wrote Thomas Matussek, a veteran German diplomat, just after Blinken's visit. "In June 2022, Kazakhstan’s leader even told Putin face-to-face that Astana would not recognize the self-proclaimed Russian-backed Donbas republics, a pivotal moment in relations between the two countries."
Going forward, with 1,097 miles of border with China on the east and 4,750 miles of border with Russia on the north, there is little doubt Kazakhstan will continue to be pulled between Russia's efforts to pursue its war and avoid ever-tightening sanctions on one side and the west's efforts to restrain the Kremlin's activities while preventing China from jumping in as a major weapons supplier. The people and voters of Kazakhstan need to understand how vital it is to hold their leaders accountable.
'Closer to the West' but also closer to the PRC?
With some limits ... it is certainly not lost on Astana just how close Putin and Xi have become....getting in bed with the latter looks increasingly like sharing the same bed with the former.
;-((