Alexei Vlasov, VK’s chief editor and political expert on Kazakhstan's prospects after the elections
- Presidential elections were held in Kazakhstan last Sunday. Their results will be announced later, but in fact they are already known. So what conclusions can we draw?
- First of all, the turnout was good, so the managers of the election campaign can be satisfied – Nursultan Nazarbayev really won the population’s sympathies. Independent observers supervised the polling, so we’ll have to wait for the reaction of the international community. And special gifts for those who came to polling stations for the first time in their lives won’t make the grade of fraud. It seems that Nazarbayev’s team didn’t have to resort to fraud after all.
- So what are the most urgent issues for Nazarbayev’s team now?
- To sum up the results, to calculate possible priorities and staff changes, especially in the presidential administration and the government. These two topics have been discussed for the past two weeks. According to the country’s law, the government should resign, so some experts speculated that the career of present Kazakh PM Karim Maximov, who has already occupied his position for too long, is finished. He failed to observe the main unpublished rule of big politics: to retire just in time to have a chance to start over again in some other quality, using all your previous achievements. But now it seems that the president is ready to leave Maximov where he is for now.
The lists of possible PM candidates have been discussed – and criticized - for a long time now in opposition circles.
- And what’s the key to Maximov’s solid position?
- It’s his close connections with the Russian political elite. Some experts tend to play down this factor, but it’s truly important in the context of building a common economic space between our countries. The Russian vector of Nazarbayev’s policy is no less important than the Chinese or Western ones.
But if the post of PM remains untouched, it will make the strife over the post of presidential administration head even harder. And if it’s true that Aslan Musin will become parliamentary speaker, then the post of presidential administration head is the only key position available.
- So who’s the most probable candidate?
- I think that the deputy chairman of the ruling party apparatus, Nurlan Nigmatullin, has the best chances. But there’s a certain catch with that – this figure is known to be a good manager, but not a good ideologist – and that’s what was previously required of presidential administration head. But we don’t know if the requirements won’t change.
And we shouldn’t forget that President Nazarbayev is known to make surprise decisions, anticipated by no-one. So I think that those experts who anticipate mass staff reshuffles in the economic as well as political structures are more correct.
I would also like to send my regards to the Kazakh people, who have made the right choice – again.
Interview by Ekaterina Tesemnikova. Exclusively to VK
