Among the amendments and laws discussed in Parliament this week, the most interesting and entertaining was a proposal by member of Parliament Sat Tokpakbayev to rename the capital city to Nursultan in honor of the President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and his role in not only running the nation but also building the city of Astana and promoting it to the world. 70% of members of Parliament apparently supported the idea.

However the President is against the change, or any renaming of the capital in his lifetime. He personally chose the name “Astana” as legend has it because it is easy to say in any language. “Astana” means ‘capital’ in Kazakh. According to the AFP, however Nazarbayev was not necessarily against a future name change. “The decision to change the name will be made by another generation,” he said in an interview on Friday.

This is not the first time someone has suggested renaming the capital in honor of the President and one does not an awful lot of buildings and organizations with the prefix “Nur”, which means ’sunbeams’ in Kazakh.

Some of the comments on the proposal from nomad.su are worth noting. One commentator points out that it will be unbelievably expensive to change every document, map and sign that has the word Astana on it. Another woman notes that she is tired of living in a country where names constantly change and is ashamed that her Parliament seems to do nothing but rename things. Finally one commentator proposes renaming a resort on Lake Kapshagai Sat, in honor of the Parliament member who made the proposal.

This just in: Nazarbayev will run the first leg of the torch relay. Hopefully that won’t mean that they shut down the route to people who want to watch, which they sometimes do when cool people are involved in things.

EDIT: The official route and who is carrying the torch is up. The President doesn’t appear to be on the list. And to answer the question in the comments, I think that occasionally Presidents or high government officials might be there to greet the torch at the airport–as I believe the akim was at Almaty airport last night–but they don’t usually carry it.

EDIT THE SECOND: Nazarbayev did carry the torch. As did the Chinese Ambassador and Rosa Rizimbayeva. Cool.

Thanks to the for posting this news.

President Nazarbayev gave an interview to Reuters last Friday. In it, he touched upon the crisis in the banking sector, NATO, foreign relations, and the energy sector. He also discussed the issue of succession, saying:

I would like to clarify this nonsense that the first president, that is me, can stay in power for an unlimited number of terms. That does not mean I will be here forever. After a five year period I will have to take part in an election in 2012. And if the people give me their support, I can stay. But I have been in this job for so many years and after all I might hand it over to the next generation, so to say, when I see that we need new, fresh people and so on. This is an electoral process…We have a lot of them here. … I think I should not give any names now to avoid upsetting anyone.

Obviously he is trying to deflect criticism that he has been named President for Life, but the hint that he may not seek another term is a rare comment heard in this country.

Other excerpts can be found here. Probably most interestingly, on the problem of Kazakhstan banks which owe collectively 4 billion dollars due this year to various lenders, Nazarbayev said,

The government has not extended a single kopeck to support banks’ liquidity itself. And the banks themselves did not need it. Of course they wanted us to boost their liquidity using state money but we will not do this. They have to deal with it themselves.

This seems to belie the fact that the government was urged to cut its budget at the end of last year to free up 4 billion dollars. Perhaps that money is being used a reserve. Or some have suggested that that money will be given to banks in the form of a development fund for small and medium businesses to boost the domestic economy and give banks some business. In the interview the President does cite the government mortgage program which has spent 1 billion dollars to give people low-interest mortgages and assist in affording housing.

In answer to those who believe Kazakhstan is nationalizing its oil industry, Nazarbayev offered reassuring words:

…Kazakhstan has no desire to nationalise any assets like in Latin America…If investors break their contracts themselves, and Kazakhstan sees that the country is losing out on something with regard to a certain contract … then we’ll say: ‘Dear friends, either pay us compensation or give us shares back to compensate for the money we lost’. Kazakhstan does not want to nationalise or take anything away from anyone

Or Kazakh-gate all over again? This issue is being covered and analyzed well in a number of websites so I’m not sure I have much to add except a bunch of links. When Bill Clinton came to Kazakhstan in 2005 and collected a donation from President Nazarbayev for his HIV/AIDS charitable fund, he may well have been doing some business on the side, assisting a businessman named Frank Giustra invest money in uranium projects in Kazakhstan. Josh Frost at Registan.net points out that getting rights to strategic resources like uranium is not normally very easy, making Bill Clinton’s role as intermediary/power pusher a little “sketchy”.

The New York Times story which broke the potential scandal describes “a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev” that greeted Clinton and Giustra upon arrival. Not something new businessmen normally get to do.

As The Roberts Report points out, inviting–even paying–big names to come to a country with a less-than-stellar-reputation is not unheard of and the local press eats it up (”Bill Clinton came to our country and ate beshbarmak. Hurrah!). Unfortunately it is also not unheard of for these big influential names to use their draw to help businessmen make deals.

Meanwhile The Daily Kos argues that this story might have an impact on the US Presidential Elections. Good coverage and summary, although one does wish they wouldn’t call it “Borat-gate”.

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…)

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…)

As many of you have probably read by now, Rakhat Aliyev, the wife of Dariga Nazarbayeva and son-in-law to the President of Kazakhstan is the subject of an international police search. The President has issued an order to arrest Aliyev, he has been reported to Interpol to be extradited to Kazakhstan for investigation, but he is apparently on the run, having stated that he wants to stay in Vienna. His homes have been searched. The reason given was his potential involvement in the kidnapping of the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of Nurbank in February. The wife of the CEO wrote an open letter to the President in the the Press, claiming that her husband had called her from captivity and claimed that Rakhat Aliyev had kidnapped him and personally beaten him. A few days after Mr. Timiraliyev returned, he went off apparently to see the financial police, and has not been seen since. His wife, Armangul Kapasheva, has been making quite a bit of noise, convinced that Aliyev has done something to her husband.

Shortly after that, Aliyev was named Ambassador to Austria, having previously been First Vice Minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Special Representative to the OSCE in Vienna. Apparently, ambassadors have immunity from prosecution or investigation, even in Kazakhstan–a privilege not enjoyed by Vice Ministers.

While investigtions have been ongoing, this case recently came back to the limelight when an employee of KTK television, owned by Mr. Aliyev and Nazarybaeyva, went missing and was found beaten. Then last week, Mr. Gilimov, the Vice Chairman of Nurbank who was kidnapped, gave an interview on Astana television channel.

According to his story (which I have no way of verifying or disproving) there was a meeting at Nurbank at which Aliyev, a major shareholder, was present (more…)

Today Parliament held the second meeting to vote on Amendments to the Constitution. Although most of the amendments proposed today had been discussed earlier, there was one surprise amendment. Parliament today voted to allow the First President of Kazakhstan to run for reelection as many times as he choses to[RU]. (more…)

Today, a joint-session of Kazakhstan’s Parliament is meeting to discuss and possibly approve Constitutional Amendments. The President will be present along with the Prime Minister, the akims of the oblasts and major cities, and representatives of the President’s Administration. According to the head of the Constitutional Commission, the proposed amendments will:

• increase the role of political fractions in both forming the government, and writing laws
• increase the role of political parties
• raise the number of members of both the Mazhilis or lower house of Parliament, and the Senate.
• increase the role of civil society organizations.
• introduce an independent court system
• Other reforms will touch upon the procurator’s office and policing bodies that carry out preliminary investigations and inquests.

The Head of the Constitutional Commission did not give details on these reforms, however, the President in his address at the joint-session introduced perhaps the most notable reform, (more…)

President Vladimir Putin was in Kazakhstan yesterday and he and President Nazarbayev will be traveling to Turkmenistan this week together. Two issues are on the agenda. First, Russia will be assisting Kazakhstan in enriching uranium for its nuclear energy power center. The two countries will be setting up a joint-uranium enrichment center. It looks like Kazakhstan will provide the uranium and Russia will provide the enrichment center at Angarsk (under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Commission), and that the goal is to sell the uranium to other countries. Russia had previously offered to enrich uranium for Iran as part of a compromise to allow Iran to continue its nuclear energy program. While the offer fell through, the fact that Russia’s offer was accepted by the US and other nations means that Russia is generally trusted in the area of enrichment, so it seems like this might be a good move for Kazakhstan, to let experienced Russian scientists handle enrichment, while hopefully at the same time, building their own capacity slowly: by learning how to do it from the Russians and by sending their students to the US and other leading nuclear engineering countries. Nothing too controversial here.

The second purpose of the visit may ruffle some feathers in Washington and elsewhere however. Hint: It involves oil (more…)