On March 20th Kazakhstan holds early parliamentary elections. Experts believe that the new parliament will be able to focus on political and economic reforms. Dmitry Zhuravlev, director of the Institute of Regional Problems, believes that Kazakhstan needs the early elections for several reasons: “First of all, today the quite complicated economic situation requires serious decisions. And the elections are not only about a set of winning deputies, they are an assessment of policy by the people, and some kind of mandate for a new policy. Such a mandate is necessary in the present-day conditions. And the Kazakh leadership, by conducting the elections, will receive this mandate in this way.
Secondly, after receiving this mandate, it will significantly strengthen the political system itself, which is very important for the further reformation of Kazakh society, the Kazakh economy and the Kazakh state.”
Zhuravlev states that that was actually said in the pre-election program of the leading party. “I would not call it ruling, because Kazakhstan, like Russia, is a presidential republic. It is the party of the parliamentary majority. It is important that the elections are held in a stable situation. Today there are many people who would like to de-stabilize the situation in Russia and Kazakhstan, and not only in these countries. And to hold elections today means not to allow some provocations, some mechanisms of de-stabilization,” the expert says.
According to him, the elections are an opportunity to update the composition: “No political system is viable if it does not partially update its composition from time to time. If it completely updates its composition, it is chaos. If it does not update, it is stagnation. And elections are a great way to find the most effective solution. That is, by changing the political groups in a personal sense, thereby partly maintaining stability, to give a new impulse to the political process. If elites are closed, it never leads to a political result. New challenges require new people.”
Zhuravlev is sure that “the mechanism for updating the elites in Kazakhstan works. It will work on a larger scale through these elections. But that is not the main goal. The main goal is to strengthen the union of the nation and the elite, because the tougher the external conditions are, the more stable and more effective such a union will be.”
