Kazakhstan's Assassinated Democracy. Yerzhan Psy.D. Dosmukhamedov
post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and refused further service to President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He has never been surprised at the President's generosity. By tempting young reformers through material wealth and titles, the old sovereign tames them for many years.
No more bribes!
Maybe he would also let himself be bought. After graduation in law from St. Petersburg State University and his return to the country, he was offered diplomatic work. He left for Germany to work in the Kazakh embassy. In Germany, there are many emigrants from Kazakhstan - the descendants of exiled Germans - thousands of whom headed to Germany after the collapse of the Communist empire.
"The embassy and Consulate in Germany had an almost unlimited budget for representative expenses", recalls Dr. Dosmukhamedov. "Diplomats used this money as their own bank accounts. When I noticed it I was told not to get embarrassed, and do what everybody else did".
Dr. Dosmukhamedov wrote to headquarters, and after the scandal he raised he was recalled to the country. Rejected from diplomatic work for the spurious reason of retirement, and after appealing to the courts, Dr. Dosmukhamedov quit his diplomatic post and went abroad to proceed with a legal career. At St. Petersburg, Oxford, Dallas and Yale he studied law and completed his Ph.D. Five years later he returned to Kazakhstan. Soon he became a legal advisor in the national company KazMunaiGaz, managed by the President's son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev. This position could have provided a very comfortable life. He also became one of the leaders of the National Union of employers and entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan - Atameken ("The land of the ancestors"). But meetings and talks with entrepreneurs and farmers suggested to him the necessity of creating a political party.
"Corruption and nepotism is a pathology, which in Kazakhstan has became a norm", Dr. Dosmukhamedov says. "Parasitical bureaucracy is gaining weight thanks to businessmen and farmers, who have to waste three-quarters of their salaries on presents and bribes for the bureaucratic army, which through millions of licenses, permits and certificates suffocate the entrepreneur. At a certain moment, we decided that it would be more useful to create our own party for the protection of middle-class interests than to waste money on avaricious officials".
Old guard stopped half way
While talking with Dr. Dosmukhamedov, I had a strong feeling that I knew him. Elegant, well bred, with refined manners, he spoke in an even voice about Kazakhstan, its sovereign, about the necessity of change and the reasons preventing its realization. In a moment I realized that we had never met before, but he reminded me of 30-40-year-old dissidents, reformers and revolutionaries whom I had met before in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Uganda and Nigeria.
In the so-called Third World, there are enough of these sovereigns, who come to power believing they will lead their countries out of backwardness, lawlessness and tyranny. One of them thought that the best way for that was through revolution, perhaps even a bloody shattering of the old laws. Others, who were more patient, chose slow reforms, which could modernize and refurbish old laws without undermining them.
Usually both the first and the second way are losing propositions. Revolutionaries turn into tyrants, and the caution and sluggishness of moderate reformers exhaust their adherents' patience, leading to disappointment.
The first group (the revolutionaries) casts aspersions on the old leaders and accuses them of treason to their face. As a rule, it is those who are obligated most of all to the sovereigns. They graduated from foreign educational institutions, where they were sent because of the kindness and generosity of the regime, or promoted young people - officials rising out of poverty. Having seen another world, they return from foreign universities with ideas about more decisive and prompt reforms. They can see the backwardness of their own country more clearly, and blame the rulers - even though the reason they could go abroad and receive an education in the first place was thanks to the rulers. They don't begrudge the old-guard leaders their gratitude, but they are full of anger because the old leaders, as they think, have stopped half way, blocking the long road to social progress.
But to carry out any reforms, the young need to rise to power or at least have the possibility of exerting an influence on it. It is impossible, since they only have outdated instruments to direct them. Consenting to the existing rules of the game, they suffer defeat, merely prolonging the lasting agony of yesterday, and as the tide of time insidiously wears their ideals away they pass into a lethargic state of resignation and disappointment.
First of all, it's necessary to testify to loyalty in Kazakhstan
In recent years in post-Soviet Central Asia, it has become a tradition that opposition parties are created by the existing regime, which in this way tries to adhere formally to a democratic ritual and sidestep criticism from the wealthy West, which points an accusing finger at the growing authoritarian tendencies in them. In Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov - before regularly organized elections - invents the names and programs of the opposition parties and even finances them.
In Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has governed the country since the first days of its independence, has allowed the existence of various political parties, ostensibly demonstrating his liberal views.
"As a matter of fact, only one party has existed in Kazakhstan - the party of bureaucracy which has only one goal and ideology: possessing and keeping power", says Dr. Dosmukhamedov.
The majority of parties calling themselves opposition parties were organized by the former vice-premiers and ministers or governors who had lost the President's favour because of excessive selfishness, avarice or unruliness. Their sole aim was to return to President Nazarbayev's favour and regain power. Nazarbayev graciously accepts these kinds of political competition, since they cannot threaten him in any way.
President Nazarbayev's elder daughter Dariga organized a somewhat different opposition party, trying to outrun the grasp of the established power structure. When Dr. Dosmukhamedov told his boss Timur Kulibayev - the husband of Nazarbayev's middle daughter Dinara - about his intention to create a political party, Kulibayev approved it and advised him to testify to his loyalty and fidelity to the President, who in Kulibayev's opinion might suggest some of his adherents as party leaders.
Kulibayev was ultimately astonished when Dr. Dosmukhamedov refused to testify in writing to his personal loyalty to the President. Remembering those days, Dr. Dosmukhamedov says that it was his moral threshold, his Rubicon, that he knew he must never cross so that he couldn't ever reproach himself for allowing others to buy him.
The West admires
President Nazarbayev realized very soon that nothing so undermines the protest of enthusiastic dissidents as profitable posts, limos and grand titles. In neighbouring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, dissidents were beaten, imprisoned and exiled from the country. Instead in Kazakhstan they went abroad as diplomatic representatives, received scholarships for studies in the premier educational institutions of the world, were given career promotions, and were allowed the opportunity to lead a lucrative existence. It seems that in Kazakhstan there were no political prisoners. Both in the region and even in Russia the newspapers were considered to have achieved a definite stage of freedom and independence from state power.
As a result, the Presidents of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were known abroad as avaricious and brutal dictators, while President Nazarbayev appeared to be a caring and unblemished leader. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher even referred to him as exactly the kind of leader with which the West would like to deal. everyone in the West wanted to deal with President Nazarbayev.
Western politicians were touched by Nazarbayev's pragmatism, in stark contrast to their mortification at the looming phantom of war chaos and atomic bombs stolen from the nuclear dumping grounds of the disintegrated Soviet Union, as the civil wars and international conflicts of the 90s spread like an infectious plague across the region. Determined and inspired by the progress, he not only consented in an amicable way to discard all Soviet atomic arsenals left in Kazakhstan, but was also adept at learning new democratic and market rhetoric. He was invited to conferences and was regarded both as the quintessential leader of the continuing systematic transformation under way and as representing the miraculous possibility of the Communist