Car Protests Gain Wider Significance

The ongoing protests against a decision to outlaw right-hand-drive cars would seem to appeal to a limited constituency of drivers in Kazakstan, but the movement has taken on a distinctly political appearance. Commentators predict that the authorities will start making concessions if the protest movement looks as though it is really becoming an organised force.



Since late November, protest actions have taken place in various cities against a decision by Kazakstan’s Security Council banning imports of right-hand-drive vehicles from January 2007, and prohibiting the use of all those now in the country from 2010. Official argue that such vehicles are causing an increasing and disproportionate number of accidents, and that many of them are too old.



Only 117,000 of the country’s 1.5 million cars have their steering wheels on the right. But political commentators say it is not so much the numbers involved as the kind of arguments that authorities have marshalled in support of the ban and their failure to offer any compensation to owners, that have given rise to such sustained hostility, which could easily tip over into a wider anti-government movement.



Rustem Lebekov, director of the Eurasian Centre for Political Studies, believe the car drivers’ movement has huge potential since what unites its members is their common interest as owners.



But if it is to grow anything more substantial, Lebekov thinks it will need what he calls “a driving and organising force”. He adds, “I still don’t see who could provide that, either among opposition leaders or among the owners themselves.”



Sabit Jusupov, president of Kazakstan’s Institute of Social and Economic Information and Forecasting, said there are clear precedents to indicate that the Kazak government might drop an unpopular decision. In Russia, for example, a ban on right-hand-drive cars introduced by President Vladimir Putin has been annulled. And in Kazakstan itself, protests by pensioners in Almaty led to a utilities price increase being abandoned.



In the latest case, an attack on ownership rights which Jusupov believes is actually unconstitutional could provoke a high level of public opposition.



“Everything depends on how events develop. There are a range of possible outcomes, and I’d say the government is taking a big risk here,” he said.



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