KAZAKHSTAN GETS A "LIFE SENTENCE"

The large-scale political changes in Kazakhstan will remain at the centre of attention for some time. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev himself initiated the vast constitutional reform. Specifically, he suggested reducing the president's term of office from seven to five years, stressing that this change should be introduced after 2012.

The president also suggested making amendments to the country's constitution according to which the presidential form of government will remain in force in the republic, but parliamentary powers will expand. "This will actually transform the model of our republic from the presidential to the presidential-parliamentary one," the Kazakh leader stressed.

Moreover, he said it was necessary to increase the number of deputies in the Mazhilis (the lower chamber of parliament) by 30 members - to 107, and in the Senate (the upper chamber of parliament) by eight members - to 47. The membership of the Senate will be enlarged by means of increasing the presidential quota from seven to 15 deputies, some of whom will be appointed after relevant consultation with the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev also suggested that the parliament examine a draft law on making changes and amendments to the constitution within a week, taking into account the fact that the draft law he proposed had accepted 80 per cent of the proposals made by the state commission on issues of democratization.

A rare case

In any case, many analysts point out that not every democratic country has a law to strictly limit or specify the number of terms served by the president. Even in the USA, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president four times in succession: 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944. In other states the president's or prime minister's term in office is restricted by political tradition rather than the law as such.

Nevertheless, many experts point out that other amendments change considerably "the balance of power" in Kazakhstan. For example, Kanat Saudabayev, the former Kazakh ambassador to the USA, who was recently appointed secretary of state for the implementation of Nazarbayev's domestic policy, described these reforms as a "decisive step", demonstrating the political "maturity" of the country. In his speech on Khabar TV, Saudabayev said that the people of Kazakhstan want to extend the president's term in office. The secretary of state welcomed Nazarbayev's "courage" in handing over some of his executive powers to the legislative branch of power. "It is rare for a president to voluntarily hand over some of his powers without any pressure from outside," Saudabayev pointed out. 

The US reaction was interesting as well. "An amendment has been made which will actually allow the president [Nazarbayev] to remain in power longer, but the package of amendments also contains many other political reforms, which we believe will further the country's progress in the right direction. In the end, if we consider the changes as a whole, this is a step in the right direction. Is this everything that the rest of the world would like to see? Not really. But I should repeat that this is a country we pin great hopes on, that we are working very closely with and that has great potential," the official representative of the US State Department, Sean McCormack, added.

We have to point out that Kazakhstan is not the first country in the post-Soviet area where the president's powers have been handed over to parliament. From the very beginning, the Baltic states chose the "European" model, where the "centre of gravity" falls on the prime minister, not on the president. The situation is "moving" in the same direction in Ukraine. Finally, the fact that the president touched on the conclusions and recommendations of the democratization commission is significant. In essence, the Kazakh model of state government which developed in the first years of independence no longer meets the new reality. If we remember that post-Soviet states have covered in 10-15 years the path that other countries took centuries to cover, we can understand that government reforms here are implemented within one political generation.

Further, there are many people in political circles in Washington and other Western capitals who regard Nazarbayev as a leader who leads his country along the path of economic development with a heavy hand, many experts point out. Against this background, the news that Nazarbayev will remain in the political arena for the foreseeable future was taken by many as good news, especially as Kazakhstan has the potential to export energy resources. During his visit to Kazakhstan in 2006, Vice-President Dick Cheney called this Central Asian country, "a strategic partner of the United States".

However, there is something else that is clear. The political reforms in Kazakhstan were initiated against the background of another upsurge in geopolitical activity around the country. Nazarbayev's proposals followed soon after the sensational meeting of the Russian, Kazakh and Turkmen presidents in Turkmenbashy, formerly Krasnovodsk, which gave rise to speculation about the failure of the West's strategy and Russia's impressive victory. Nevertheless, the rivals in the fight for influence in the Caspian hardly intend to lay down their arms and accept the current disposition of forces. In this situation, we should not forget that attempts to correct the foreign policy of this or that state from the outside are made all the time, often using domestic political "levers". Against this backdrop, the reforms to give the system of government in Kazakhstan more stability and flexibility are quite logical.

The last "hero" of the opposition?

In any case, many analysts point out that international reaction to what is going on in Kazakhstan today will depend heavily on the response of the Kazakh opposition. For the time being, only the regional media reports its activity. According to their information, opponents of the constitutional reform which gives President Nursultan Nazarbayev the chance to rule for the rest of his life are continuing their minor protests, although the police easily neutralize and disperse them. For example, an activist in the unregistered opposition party Alga, Kanat Isayev, turned up in a pedestrian zone in Almaty city centre with a poster saying "18 minutes and we'll be in a khanate" and "Shame on parliament". Several minutes later, a representative of the prosecutor's office demanded that Isayev and his supporters end the protest, after which the opposition activist and a protester were detained.

Meanwhile, many analysts are wondering how the "Rahat Aliyev case" will affect the opposition. When the country's Interior Minister put the former Kazakh ambassador to Austria, Rahat Aliyev, on the international wanted list, many were shocked by this report - not only because of the impressive list of accusations, but also because he is charged with organizing a criminal group in order to kidnap people, illegally seize administrative buildings and land, and to seize private property by force. Earlier, the Kazakh Interior Ministry had opened a criminal investigation into a case of kidnapping. We are talking about the disappearance of the chairman of the board of the Kazakh commercial bank Nurbank, Abilmazhen Gilimov, the first deputy chairman of the board of this bank, Zholdas Timraliyev, and an employee of the same bank, Aybar Khasenov, in January this year. The whereabouts of Timraliyev and Khasenov are still not known.

However, the delicacy of the situation lies in the fact that 44-year-old Rahat Aliyev is married to the Kazakh president's elder daughter - Dariga. Moskovskiy Komsomolets points out that "the name of Rahat Aliyev, the husband of the president's elder daughter Dariga, struck terror into Kazakh politicians and businessmen. The former top official of the local state security service, Aliyev, was accused of employing completely arbitrary methods of business management".

To be honest, the list of accusations against Rahat Aliyev resembles in horrible detail the case of Ali Kaitov, the son-in-law of the president of the Russian republic of Karachay-Cherkessia. Of course, in Karachay-Cherkessia seven people were murdered, while in Kazakhstan people were only kidnapped, but the basis of the story is the same: both Kaitov and Aliyev were sure that they could run their business, or to be more precise, raids, without being choosy about the means. However, if in Karachay-Cherkessia people had to storm parliament, in Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev granted special powers to the prosecutor who investigated this case.

Rahat Aliyev was arrested in Vienna on 1 June. Austrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Astrid Hartz said earlier that the decision to strip Aliyev of his immunity came into force on 29 May. She said this was done at the request of the Kazakh authorities who informed the republic about Aliyev's dismissal from his post. According to the latest reports, the Austrian Prosecutor's Office is studying Kazakhstan's request for Aliyev's extradition and his possible arrest. However, on 4 June Rahat Aliyev was released on bail after paying one million euros and giving a written undertaking not to leave his place of residence, a spokesman for the Austrian Prosecutor-General's Office, Gerhard Jarosch, said. He confirmed that Aliyev can be extradited. According to the representative of the Prosecutor's Office, the decision to release Aliyev on bail was made by a duty judge of the Vienna regional court where Aliyev was delivered on Friday and placed under arrest. This decision was motivated, first of all, by the fact that the trial might drag on and its outcome is not clear. At the same time, the police took a number of measures to prevent Aliyev from running away. 

However, we did not have to wait long for attempts to present Rahat Aliyev as "a victim of arbitrary arrest". The media put out statements saying that Rahat Aliyev was planning to run for the presidency in 2012 and the current criminal case was just a "crackdown" on the candidate.

"In these conditions, only a person with clear suicidal inclinations can return to Kazakhstan," Izvetiya quotes Aliyev as saying. "The media business that belonged to me in Kazakhstan has been destroyed, and my companies have been taken away from me."

The website of the Austrian magazine Profil published an interview with Aliyev which was recorded shortly before his arrest where, as was to be expected, he said: "My only crime is that I expressed an opinion that is slightly different from the (Kazakh) president's opinion. I dared to say that I would like to run for the presidency and that I am in favour of reforms." Aliyev maintains that he was offered a deal: to hand over his bodyguards who were accused of kidnapping the banker. "But I do not betray my friends," the Kazakh president's son-in-law said before his arrest. According to Rahat Aliyev, Nazarbayev and his circle are "trying to ruin his family": his seven-year-old daughter and 22-year-old son are allegedly held "hostage" in Kazakhstan while his 16-year-old son and he are hiding in Vienna. But when Rahat Aliyev said that the special services of Kazakhstan are working in a "Soviet-style manner", the magazine's correspondent reminded Aliyev that he himself had been one of Kazakhstan's intelligence chiefs. Rahat Aliyev's answer that he "tried to change the system and make it more controllable" was not really convincing.

It was significant that in the same interview, Rahat Aliyev asked not to be seen as "an opposition leader". Then he made his main statement: Aliyev confirmed that he intends to apply for Austrian citizenship, pointing out his services to this European country, and expressed the hope that the Austrian authorities would not hand him over to Kazakhstan where his life might be in danger. In a word, this was the usual set of words from an "asylum-seeker" which immigration officers of EU countries have to hear 40 times a day.

It is worth remembering that Kazakhstan has always occupied a special place in the post-Soviet area. Being the largest country after Russia with huge mineral resources, the Baykonur space launch site and borders from the Caspian Sea to China, it has a political, economic and geostrategic potential that can hardly be overestimated. At the same time, unlike its regional neighbours, Kazakhstan has been able to avoid "breakthroughs", "U-turns" and "re-orientations" since the collapse of the USSR and has been able to demonstrate quite stable and speedy development. It is clear that against this background, a tense struggle for influence on the situation in Astana is a foregone conclusion. At the same time, in essence, there is no real and capable opposition in Kazakhstan. For this reason, it is not difficult to guess that many forces will want to place a serious political stake on someone like Rahat Aliyev.