Kazak Parliament to Rule on Extending President's Term

Although Kazak president Nursultan Nazarbaev has vetoed a bill to extend his term in office until 2020 – avoiding the need for an election next year – parliament may still insist on the move when it meets on January 14.

Critics of plans for a referendum prolonging Nazarbaev’s current term to 2020 say it would be a blow to democracy.

They suspect the president’s demurral, which came in the form of a decree issued on January 6, is just a ploy, and believe parliament will push through the change anyway by securing the required 80 per cent majority.

Formally raised in parliament in December, the referendum plan originated among a group of public figures from East Kazakstan region, led by the rector of Semey State University, Yerlan Sydykov.

Speaking to reporters on January 10, Sydykov said that more than four million people – in other words four out of ten voting-age Kazak citizens – had signed up in support of holding a referendum. This far exceeds the 200,000 signatures needed for a referendum to take place.

Now 70, Nazarbaev has ruled Kazakstan continuously since he was elected president of the newly-independent state in 1991. A referendum in 1995 extended his term in office, and he went on to win elections in 1999 and 2005, the last time for an extended seven instead of five years.

While future presidents will be restricted to two terms, a constitutional change from 2007 allows Nazarbaev to run as many times as he wants.

Supporters of extending Nazarbaev’s current term say he is irreplaceable for the moment.

Amzebek Jolshibekov, who chairs the parliamentary committee for international affairs, defence and security, sees Nazarbaev as the guarantor of peace and stability.

He argues that Kazakstan has no need to subject itself to the kind of unrest which has ousted presidents in other Soviet republics.

Political analysts and opposition activists in Kazakstan believe the referendum is almost inevitable despite the president’s veto. They recall that Nazarbaev refused to sign a bill last year granting him numerous privileges as “Leader of the Nation”, but the legislation went through anyway when it was signed by the prime minister and the speakers of both houses of parliament.

Serikbolsyn Abdildin, former leader of the Communist Party of Kazakstan, believes Nazarbaev is merely trying to distance himself from a plan that might look embarrassing abroad.

“The president has sent out a message to the international community to say he is not a dictator or a monarch,” Abdildin said.

Protest against the referendum were led by NGOs and opposition groups, which said the plan violated the basic civil right to elect one’s leaders.

Six people were arrested in the western city of Uralsk during a January 6 demonstration organised by a group made up of journalists and members of the opposition Alga party. Two were given five days in jail each for resisting arrest, while the others were fined.

The NGO coalition Kazakstan-OSCE 2010 issued a statement on January 13 calling for the 2012 election to be held according to schedule.

The Almaty-based human rights group Ar-Rukh-Hak organised an online counter-petition, publicised on the website of opposition newspaper Respublika on January 11 called public to sign up.

Acknowledging that only 400 people had signed up so far, the group’s head Bakytjan Toregojina ascribed this to an “atmosphere of political pressure”.

Toregojina is among those who have accused organisers of the referendum petition of coercing people into signing the pro-referendum document.

Many residents of Almaty interviewed by IWPR confirmed that they had been approached and asked to sign.

An employee of a marketing agency said she signed after her office manager put pressure on her, saying a friend at the Kazak justice ministry had been tasked with gathering signatures and had asked her to help.

Another Almaty resident who works for a major electronics firm said managers there made it mandatory for staff to provide their passport details for the petition.

A housewife who gave her first name as Elana said she had seen how details of pupils at her daughter’s school were taken down by one of the parents for inclusion in the list.

“Frankly, people didn’t make an attempt to find out what it was all about, and it looked as though they didn’t even care,” she said, admitting she had signed the petition herself.

Another mother, Bakhyt, said her daughter’s teacher had asked for her ID details so her name could be put down. Bakhyt refused to do so, saying she was free not to.

Mikhail Panin, who is deputy rector of the teacher-training institute in Semey and one of the architects of the referendum proposal, denied that anyone had been forced to sign.

“We repeated over and over at meetings and conferences that no one has the right to coerce anyone; this is about an expression of citizens’ free will,” he said.

Mirlan Telebarisov is a freelance reporter in Kazakstan. Andrei Grishin is a staff member at the Kazakstan Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law.