Just noticed on Chriss Merriman’s site that he has a new page up where you can find some of his posts on life in Kazakhstan, and links to some other sources of basic information about the country. Check out if you want to get an idea of what life is like from the point of view of an expat.

You can also check out Chris’ posts tagged with Kazakhstan. And if you want my humble opinion, check out my posts tagged with life in KZ for more on what it’s really like to live in Astana.

Bonnie Boyd provides an update on the trial of Mark Seidenfeld which opened on 15 June, after a delay earlier. However, the complainant, Zhunssov was not in court, because he was too busy running a marathon in China. Clearly either this case is not very important to him, or he has watched to many Western movies in which cool people carry out business from mountain retreats while underlings do the dirty work. However, the nasty judge seems to think Zhunussov should be there 18 June when next trial date is set.

Yesterday Parliament approved and the President signed a new law “On Parliament” which basically clarifies some points regarding the new constitutional amendments and how they will be carried out.

Parliament will be dissolvedand a new Parliament elected. Under the new system, each party will publish its list of proposed members of Parliament, but the people will vote for parties, not for individuals. The justification of this new system is that parties will be forced to serve the wishes of the people and become an important part of civil society in Kazakhstan. In fact, with the current majority held by Nurotan, there is almost no question that Nurotan will maintain, if not increase, its almost 100% hold on Parliament.

It is also rumored that the government will step down, because the new amendments give Parliament the right to approve Ministers. Therefore for the country to be in line with the new amendments, the ministers will go. There is a question of whether this will be a formality or not, since the government changed and a new PM was appointed only5 months ago.

Thanks to Registan for providing some of the latest news and the following links. In the wake of the announcement that two opposition parties, Nagyz Ak Zhol and the Social Democratic Party would form an electoral block, in order to garner more votes under the new Parliamentary election system, the new law “On Parliament” outlaws electoral blocks. Coincidence? It is hard not to share Nathan’s cyncisim:

It would appear that cooperation with one another is not the kind of strength the reforms seek to encourage.

EDIT: As of Tuesday, the 19th of June, Aliyev claims that the interview described below, in which he apologized to the Presdient was in fact a fake composed by the editors of “Vremya” newspaper. The editors are sticking to their guns. So maybe the announcement that the interview was fake, was in fact fake?

Rakhat Aliyev has apologized to the President for his scandalous statements of late, including those calling the President a dictator and those suggesting Kazakhstan was slipping into a dictatorship.

I want to answer personally before the president for the political statement made. I apologize to the president. That statement was made under the impact of very strong emotions…I would even say it was an emotional breakdown. The interior minister and the prosecutor general walked on me, accusing me of
horrendous crimes. I can even say it was an emotional fit

Regarding his comments on the Constitutional amendment allowing Nazarbayev to run for President as many times as he likes, Aliyev says:

I only meant to say that Western politicians, with whom I discussed [Kazakhstan’s] presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, would not understand such an amendment. And opponents of our presidency could mishandle it, and the entire work done would become a wasteful effort

I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to check the record and decide if he meant to be as nasty to the President as he was, or if he was just stressed out for those two weeks.

Aliyev has lost more than his brief career as an opposition candidate for President, however. He has also lost his wife, claiming on Monday that he had been divorced from Dariga Nazarbayeva without his consent. And finally, Nazarbayeva will be buying a controlling interest in Nurbank–since Aliyev owns over 50% of the shares, she will have to be acquiring at least some of his.

Whether all of this was agreed to behind doors in exchange for a release from all criminal charges, or whether the powers that be have washed their hands of Aliyev remains to be seen. If his court case goes smoothly and he is cleared of all charges, we might view these recent unhappy events as a plea bargin of sorts. If not, it might well mean that Aliyev is no longer in favor. The greatest tragedy here is that everything is being done behind closed doors and it makes it that much harder for the people of Kazakhstan to trust their government or believe that the interests of the people are the primary motivation for the government’s actions

On the 15th of June, bulldozers arrived at the site of the Hare Krishna community in Almatinski oblast in the South of Kazakhstan, and destroyed 12 more homes, according to Forum 18, an international religious rights organization, despite earlier assurances that the dispute over the legal status of the commune was under negotiation.

“The action started just before seven o’clock on several homes simultaneously,” [the spokesman for the group] Varfolomeyev told Forum 18. “Workers threw personal belongings outside and then started attacking the houses with sledgehammers and crowbars. Then the diggers moved in, turning from side to side, and reduced the homes to rubble. The houses were literally crushed into dust. By ten o’clock it was all over.”

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Thanks to Nonpon, for pointing out an article in Modern Drunkard Magazine on kumys drinking. Kumys is of course very mildly alchoholic and will not get you wasted unless you gulp down three or four straight. Personally I prefer shubat, fermented camel’s milk which is much thicker than kumys.

I also wanted to point out that if you are dying for a T-shirt of Chingis Khan with a kumys moustache, you can go here: Got Kumys, to a Cafe Press site set up by a friend of mine, based on some jokes we made. Check out the other merchandise if you like as well and then buy lots of stuff. Of course, they do not yet ship to Kazakhstan, so I don’t get to have anything. But I do get a dollar or so profit on the tees, so get your Christmas/New Years shopping done early!

Yesterday the President of Kazakhstan gave a televised press-conference, answering the 30 most popular questions put to him on the e-government portal, and some of the questions emailed to him. Well, almost the top 30 questions…the most popular question:

Как пропатчить KDE под FreeBSD????

How can (pay for? elect?) KDE under FreeBSD? was commented on, but no one seems to know what that means.

Ak Orda.kz has a brief article on it in English. He got 5 195 questions and 169 761 votes were collected for questions.

The transcript in Russian is also posted on Ak Orda and hopefully an English transcript will follow. However, I wanted to paraphrase/translate a few of the more interesting questions and at this time, the most interesting question was probably when the President asked about his opinion of the situation surrounding Nurbank and Rakhat Aliyev. (more…)

Paul Theroux, the prolific and noted travel writer, probably most famous in this region for his book on traveling the Trans-Siberian railroad, has written an article for the New Yorker on Turkmenistan and the cult of personality, Letter from Turkmenistan and given an interview with RFE/RL in Turkmenistan.

Interesting reading, particularly the end of the interview:

So you can’t criticize Niyazov too much. You have to see that he’s part of a tendency. That’s a tendency. And the people who criticize him have also to look at places like the George Bush Airport and say, “Well, what’s the story with that?” Or in his lifetime, [former U.S. President] Ronald Reagan — there was Reagan airport and Reagan this and Reagan that and the Reagan Library. They were also named after him. So I’m against that. And I also think that that’s also part of, maybe not a cult of personality, but that’s an obsession with personality. You should name it after dead people, people who are dead, and people who are really great — writers, thinkers, scientists — not politicians.

Bush-bashi anyone?

Bonnie Boyd at Central Asia has an update on the situation with Aliyev. He has been detained–on his way back from a barber shop no less, but has paid his bail of 1 million Euros. Bonnie provides an excellent analysis of how the extradition process might work.

On the same note, I’ve been meaning to link to this post by Bonnie for a while, with some solid analysis of why this fight between Nazarbaryev and Aliyev broke out in the first place. She also links to all the other good analyses, so I recommend checking it out.

On June 7th, President Nazarbayev will hold an Internet press conference, answering questions sent in through the Internet. You can write to akorda@e.gov.kz or go to go to E.Gov.kz, the Kazakhstan government electronic portal. There you can also see the questions asked, and vote for your favorite questions.

He is taking questions from foreigners so feel free to write in. As of today, they have received 1510 questions and 88 154 votes for questions. Of course they noted on Khabar news that some questions were insulting and had to be rejected or edited, and some questions were “incorrect; we have already said that we won’t take personal questions.” Which is too bad, but I do wonder what they consider to be a personal question. (more…)