Kazak Leader Wants Fewer but Stronger Parties

After President Nursultan Nazarbaev said Kazakstan should have just two to four strong parties, NBCentralAsia analysts say further mergers between parties are likely, but they predict the process of consolidation will be artificial.



On April 9, President Nazarbaev said he would like to see a handful of major parties operating in future.



“I think our political system should develop, and the parties should develop, so that Kazakstan has two, three or four large parties seeking to win over the public, come to power and carry out their aims,” Nazarbaev said.



NBCentralAsia analysts say Nazarbaev’s statement may accelerate the process of mergers which began last year, but they fear the resulting alliances will be superficial.



Political scientist Erkin Tukumov says that in developed democracies, having a restricted number of strong parties can work, because they have survived through natural selection. He believes small numbers of parties make things easy for the public, and helps government function smoothly.



But he added, “The survival of the fittest has got to be a natural process. The artificial process by which the political landscape is created in Kazakstan has nothing in common with what goes in democratic countries.”



The latest party merger was on April 1, when leaders of the Kazak social-democratic party Auyl (Village) and the Party of Patriots in Kazakstan announced they were forming an alliance called Birlik (Unity). One week before that, the Communist Party of Kazakstan and the Communist People’s Party of Kazakstan came back together after a three-year split.



Over the past six months, the governing Nur Otan party has swallowed up the Asar, Civil and Agrarian parties.



Analyst Maksim Kaznacheev says the fact that the Kazak authorities play an active part in shaping parties naturally distorts the conditions in which rival political tendencies compete.



“The president doesn’t hide the fact that it is the authorities which launched the process by which the political party system formred, and they’re still engage in it,” he said.



NBCentralAsia analysts say Kazakstan’s parties are able to merge into larger political alliances rapidly and without much prior negotiation on ideological matters. The reason why this is possible is that the process is all about the personalities who head these parties and what they want.



“The struggle among parties is not about ideology or policy matters – it has to do with their leaders’ own interests and ambitions. So any combination is possible in a party alliance – their programmes are all very similar,” said Kaznacheev.





(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)