President's Daughter to Stand Down

The Kazak president’s daughter Dariga Nazarbaeva, currently a member of parliament, is not going to stand again in the forthcoming election.



NBCentralAsia analysts say the charges brought against her Nazarbaeva’s ex-husband Rahat Aliev have made her undesirable as a politician – and ruined her chances of being chosen as the president’s successor.



On July 7, when the presidential party Nur Otan presented its list of candidates for the August 18 election to the lower house of parliament or Majilis, Nazarbaeva’s name was not among them.



Previously viewed as a possible successor when the moment came for her father to step down, Nazarbaeva was dismissed as deputy chair of Nur Otan and removed from the party’s ruling board on July 3.



Nur Otan is now formally led by President Nazarbaev after constitutional amendments adopted in May made this possible.



Dariga Nazarbaeva was head of the Asar party which merged with Nur Otan last summer, marking the beginning of a significant expansion in the latter party, which now has a membership of about a million following its incorporation of the Agrarian and Civic parties.



NBCentralAsia analysts say Nazarbaeva has been removed from the upper echelons of Nur Otan because of the ongoing scandal surrounding Aliev, who is accused of kidnapping two former heads of a major commercial bank, Nurbank. He was Kazakstan’s ambassador to Austria before he was sacked and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He is still in Vienna although the Kazak authorities have requested his extradition.



Commentators say the party clearly reckons it would suffer in the election if it were associated with such bad publicity.



“Nur Otan faces a huge task in the election campaign… they understand that now they will have to work hard to win over the electorate in view of the political scandals that have been unfolding lately,” said NBCentralAsia observer Rozalana Taukina.



Taukina believes Nazarbaeva may also lose control of the media outlets that she and Aliev controlled.



After Aliev was charged at the end of May, the prosecutor’s office suspended the Karavan newspaper and the KTK television channel for three months, officially because they were not carrying 50 per cent of their material in Kazak rather than Russian. Both media outlets were affiliated with Nazarbaeva and Aliev.



Observers say that Nazarbaeva’s departure from politics may only be temporary, and they certainly rule out any idea that she would join the opposition.



“As part of some rotation, Dariga could be brought back into parliament as a Senate [upper house] member, for example. It is no big problem for her,” said Taukina.



Under the new constitution, the president appoints 15 of the Senate’s 47 members.



NBCentralAsia analyst Petr Svoik believes that although Nazarbaeva may bounce back into politics, it is unlikely that she will ever regain her previous status as the president’s likely successor.



“Dariga and her husband were the only politicians who thanks to their unique position could really afford to engage in [serious] politics,” said Svoik.



“Anyone who has got too close to being a successor has been shot down in flames because of the logic of [Kazak] politics.”



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