Opposition to Challenge Kazak Leader

An opposition plan to campaign for a national referendum as a way of forcing Kazakstan's president Nursultan Nazarbaev to resign is so unrealistic that it is little more than a publicity stunt, analysts say.

People Power, a coalition between the Alga party and the Communist Party of Kazakstan, CPK, plans to launch the campaign at an event on September 25. To win approval for a referendum, organisers would need to gather 200,000 signatures in which all administrative regions of Kazakstan must be represented in equal measure.

Announcing the referendum plan at a September 2 press conference, Alga leader Vladimir Kozlov said it was time for a change at the top in Kazakstan, and this should take place as an orderly, legitimate succession process.

Nazarbaev has run the republic for over two decades, since it was part of the Soviet Union.

“People who feel they’ve got the capacity to run the country know there’s no legislative route to power, so they might start seeking other ways,” Kozlov told IWPR. “And that would mean violence and chaos. We don’t need that.”

In April this year, neighbouring Kyrgyzstan was plunged into sustained political turbulence when the then president Kurmanbek Bakiev was ousted from power. The instability culminated in an explosion of ethnic clashes in and around the southern cities of Osh and Jalalabad in June, which left at least 330 people dead and caused widespread devastation.

Kozlov said the legislation in place in Kazakstan was geared towards continuity rather than changes of power.

“Power must be handed on, otherwise let’s abolish the republic and proclaim ourselves a sultanate,” he said.

Kozlov made it clear he did not necessarily mean the opposition should come to power, as there were many potential successors in the ruling elite.

The immediate motive for the People Power referendum campaign is a recent law according Nazarbaev lifelong status as “Leader of the Nation”, which would leave him with considerable political clout and immunity from prosecution if and when he decides to stand down. The next presidential election is due in 2012.

The law, published in government-run newspapers media on June 15, was signed by the prime minister and the speakers of both houses of parliament. Nazarbaev, who normally signs bills into law, has not done so – but nor has he vetoed it. In any case, laws come into force on the day they are published.

The official reaction to the People Power's proposal came the day after the press conference, when Yerlan Karin, secretary of the president’s party Nur Otan told the KazTAG news agency that it made no sense and was “an absurd idea”.

Karin said opposition groups were weak and lacked a real presence across Kazakstan, and were therefore incapable of managing the complexities of arranging a referendum. The result, he predicted, was that they would lose rather than gain public support.

He added that President Nazarbaev enjoyed the confidence and backing of a majority of Kazakstan’s population.

Many analysts, and even some other opposition politicians, agree that People Power stands little chance of bringing its referendum plan to fruition. They point out that one of the bloc’s members, Alga, is not even a recognised political party, as the government has consistently refused to grant it registration.

Anton Morozov of the Institute for Strategic Studies, which is linked to the president’s office, said the bloc members were not a strong opposition force.

“In all the time the [Alga] party has existed, most of its actions have not gone any further than various PR events and moves. This idea therefore can’t be seen as a serious threat to the current authorities,” he told IWPR.

Vladislav Kosarev, leader of the Communist People’s Party, a separate group from the CPK, said he believed Alga was motivated partly by its grievance over the registration issue.

“It’s understandable that in a situation like that, all the party’s members will be calling for the president’s resignation. But the party is by no means the entire nation,” he said.

Bolat Abilov, co-chairman of the opposition Azat National Social Democratic Party, expressed doubts about the feasibility of a referendum in the current political set-up.

In an interview for RFE/RL’s Kazak service on September 2, Abilov said, “Our own party has tried to organise referenda on various issues on several occasions, but none of these attempts succeeded. The authorities obstructed our efforts every time. And on a difficult subject like this one... I doubt it’s possible.”

Maxim Kaznacheev, head of the politics department at the Institute of Political Solutions in Almaty, said People Power lacked the nationwide reach needed to publicise the campaign and gather large numbers of signatures.

“We need to realise that this political bloc doesn’t have the information resources to get its referendum idea into the public consciousness,” he said.

Kozlov told IWPR he was well aware of the risks of challenging Nazarbaev, especially since Kazak legislation includes tough penalties for insulting the president.

To head off legal troubles, he wrote to the presidential administration and the prosecutor general’s office in July to clarify whether a referendum asking whether the president should resign could be classed as a criminal offence.

Kozlov says the prosecutor’s office has assured him a written response has been posted to him, but he has not received it. In the absence of a negative response, he said, People Power feels it can go ahead with launching its campaign.

Yulia Kuznetsova is a freelance journalist in Kazakstan.

This article was produced jointly under two IWPR projects: Building Central Asian Human Rights Protection & Education Through the Media, funded by the European Commission; and the Human Rights Reporting, Confidence Building and Conflict Information Programme, funded by the Foreign Ministry of Norway.

The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of IWPR and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of either the European Union or the Foreign Ministry of Norway.