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NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA: NAZARBAYEV TO REGROUP POLITICAL FORCES
Consolidated pro-presidential party system is being created in Kazakhstan
The Kazakh authorities are strengthening their party influence. One of the pro-government parties has declared that it is going to join the Otan (“Fatherland”) party, whose leader is President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Recently, Asar (“All Together”) party has also joined Otan. Asar is headed by the elder daughter of the incumbent president Dariga Nazarbayeva. Now the Civic Party of Kazakhstan is going to do the same. This party is called behind the scenes the party of foreign investors, because it has the representatives of Kazakhstan’s industry. It is noteworthy that the leader of the Civic Party Azat Peruashev in his briefing openly said that the party could not get the power because of the “Otan monopoly”: “We can see that now everything is set up for the party that is to win the elections”. According to Peruashev, “under these circumstances the Civic Party cannot struggle for power on its own”.
The leader of the Civic Party of Kazakhstan came to this conclusion after the elections of regional and city governors, which took place on October 20 in Kazakhstan. As a result of the elections Otan party members got 55 of 59 governor’s posts.
The Civic Party of Kazakhstan is expected to join Otan before the end of this year. But that’s not the whole story. The Agrarian Party of Kazakhstan also intends to join Otan. This party along with the Civic Party of Kazakhstan is a landmark on the country’s political scene and both have a say in Kazakhstan. Like Otan the two parties are considered to have vast electorate and to be influential enough: each of them is about 200 thousand strong, and Otan is 500 thousand strong. After Asar’s joining the party in power about 200 thousand people became members of that party.
At present, the Otan party enjoys full monopoly on all of the power bodies. It has the absolute majority in the both Parliament Chambers (only one oppositionist of 116 members of the two Chambers), the ministers and the regional heads also belong to the pro-presidential party. The twelve Kazakh parties include only three opposition ones, the others are either fully or partially pro-government parties. Possibly, some other parties will want to join Otan.
As a matter of fact, Kazakhstan’s politics is dominated by pro-governmental forces represented by one strong party – the Otan party. The opposition continues to be sidelined. Its members are represented neither in the representative nor in executive powers. Even the mass media are not accessible for the Kazakh opposition. Kazakhstan has no opposition TV channels while the official channels are inaccessible for the left forces. The few opposition newspapers have an extremely small circulation. So, current consolidation of the pro-government forces will move the Kazakh opposition still further to the periphery of political life.
Saken SALIMOV, Astana
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Russia, November 1, 2006
Translated by "Eurasian Home"
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