Читать книгу Kazakhstan's Assassinated Democracy - Yerzhan Psy.D. Dosmukhamedov - Страница 12

Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland)

26 June 2008

"In striving for the chairmanship in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, our regime has deceived the democratic community". "For the West, Kazakhstan is just a raw-material colony. It is not embarrassed by a dictator...as long as he sells oil" - says an opposition leader from Kazakhstan, who is the Chairman of the Atameken Party, Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov.

Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov states that he was relieved after his retirement from a diplomatic post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and refused further service to President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He has never been surprised at the President's generosity. By tempting young reformers through material wealth and titles, the old sovereign tames them for many years.

No more bribes!

Maybe he would also let himself be bought. After graduation in law from St. Petersburg State University and his return to the country, he was offered diplomatic work. He left for Germany to work in the Kazakh embassy. In Germany, there are many emigrants from Kazakhstan - the descendants of exiled Germans - thousands of whom headed to Germany after the collapse of the Communist empire.

"The embassy and Consulate in Germany had an almost unlimited budget for representative expenses", recalls Dr. Dosmukhamedov. "Diplomats used this money as their own bank accounts. When I noticed it I was told not to get embarrassed, and do what everybody else did".

Dr. Dosmukhamedov wrote to headquarters, and after the scandal he raised he was recalled to the country. Rejected from diplomatic work for the spurious reason of retirement, and after appealing to the courts, Dr. Dosmukhamedov quit his diplomatic post and went abroad to proceed with a legal career. At St. Petersburg, Oxford, Dallas and Yale he studied law and completed his Ph.D. Five years later he returned to Kazakhstan. Soon he became a legal advisor in the national company KazMunaiGaz, managed by the President's son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev. This position could have provided a very comfortable life. He also became one of the leaders of the National Union of employers and entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan - Atameken ("The land of the ancestors"). But meetings and talks with entrepreneurs and farmers suggested to him the necessity of creating a political party.

"Corruption and nepotism is a pathology, which in Kazakhstan has became a norm", Dr. Dosmukhamedov says. "Parasitical bureaucracy is gaining weight thanks to businessmen and farmers, who have to waste three-quarters of their salaries on presents and bribes for the bureaucratic army, which through millions of licenses, permits and certificates suffocate the entrepreneur. At a certain moment, we decided that it would be more useful to create our own party for the protection of middle-class interests than to waste money on avaricious officials".

Old guard stopped half way

While talking with Dr. Dosmukhamedov, I had a strong feeling that I knew him. Elegant, well bred, with refined manners, he spoke in an even voice about Kazakhstan, its sovereign, about the necessity of change and the reasons preventing its realization. In a moment I realized that we had never met before, but he reminded me of 30-40-year-old dissidents, reformers and revolutionaries whom I had met before in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Uganda and Nigeria.

In the so-called Third World, there are enough of these sovereigns, who come to power believing they will lead their countries out of backwardness, lawlessness and tyranny. One of them thought that the best way for that was through revolution, perhaps even a bloody shattering of the old laws. Others, who were more patient, chose slow reforms, which could modernize and refurbish old laws without undermining them.

Usually both the first and the second way are losing propositions. Revolutionaries turn into tyrants, and the caution and sluggishness of moderate reformers exhaust their adherents' patience, leading to disappointment.

The first group (the revolutionaries) casts aspersions on the old leaders and accuses them of treason to their face. As a rule, it is those who are obligated most of all to the sovereigns. They graduated from foreign educational institutions, where they were sent because of the kindness and generosity of the regime, or promoted young people - officials rising out of poverty. Having seen another world, they return from foreign universities with ideas about more decisive and prompt reforms. They can see the backwardness of their own country more clearly, and blame the rulers - even though the reason they could go abroad and receive an education in the first place was thanks to the rulers. They don't begrudge the old-guard leaders their gratitude, but they are full of anger because the old leaders, as they think, have stopped half way, blocking the long road to social progress.

But to carry out any reforms, the young need to rise to power or at least have the possibility of exerting an influence on it. It is impossible, since they only have outdated instruments to direct them. Consenting to the existing rules of the game, they suffer defeat, merely prolonging the lasting agony of yesterday, and as the tide of time insidiously wears their ideals away they pass into a lethargic state of resignation and disappointment.

First of all, it's necessary to testify to loyalty in Kazakhstan

In recent years in post-Soviet Central Asia, it has become a tradition that opposition parties are created by the existing regime, which in this way tries to adhere formally to a democratic ritual and sidestep criticism from the wealthy West, which points an accusing finger at the growing authoritarian tendencies in them. In Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov - before regularly organized elections - invents the names and programs of the opposition parties and even finances them.

In Kazakhstan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has governed the country since the first days of its independence, has allowed the existence of various political parties, ostensibly demonstrating his liberal views.

"As a matter of fact, only one party has existed in Kazakhstan - the party of bureaucracy which has only one goal and ideology: possessing and keeping power", says Dr. Dosmukhamedov.

The majority of parties calling themselves opposition parties were organized by the former vice-premiers and ministers or governors who had lost the President's favour because of excessive selfishness, avarice or unruliness. Their sole aim was to return to President Nazarbayev's favour and regain power. Nazarbayev graciously accepts these kinds of political competition, since they cannot threaten him in any way.

President Nazarbayev's elder daughter Dariga organized a somewhat different opposition party, trying to outrun the grasp of the established power structure. When Dr. Dosmukhamedov told his boss Timur Kulibayev - the husband of Nazarbayev's middle daughter Dinara - about his intention to create a political party, Kulibayev approved it and advised him to testify to his loyalty and fidelity to the President, who in Kulibayev's opinion might suggest some of his adherents as party leaders.

Kulibayev was ultimately astonished when Dr. Dosmukhamedov refused to testify in writing to his personal loyalty to the President. Remembering those days, Dr. Dosmukhamedov says that it was his moral threshold, his Rubicon, that he knew he must never cross so that he couldn't ever reproach himself for allowing others to buy him.

The West admires

President Nazarbayev realized very soon that nothing so undermines the protest of enthusiastic dissidents as profitable posts, limos and grand titles. In neighbouring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, dissidents were beaten, imprisoned and exiled from the country. Instead in Kazakhstan they went abroad as diplomatic representatives, received scholarships for studies in the premier educational institutions of the world, were given career promotions, and were allowed the opportunity to lead a lucrative existence. It seems that in Kazakhstan there were no political prisoners. Both in the region and even in Russia the newspapers were considered to have achieved a definite stage of freedom and independence from state power.

As a result, the Presidents of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were known abroad as avaricious and brutal dictators, while President Nazarbayev appeared to be a caring and unblemished leader. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher even referred to him as exactly the kind of leader with which the West would like to deal. everyone in the West wanted to deal with President Nazarbayev.

Western politicians were touched by Nazarbayev's pragmatism, in stark contrast to their mortification at the looming phantom of war chaos and atomic bombs stolen from the nuclear dumping grounds of the disintegrated Soviet Union, as the civil wars and international conflicts of the 90s spread like an infectious plague across the region. Determined and inspired by the progress, he not only consented in an amicable way to discard all Soviet atomic arsenals left in Kazakhstan, but was also adept at learning new democratic and market rhetoric. He was invited to conferences and was regarded both as the quintessential leader of the continuing systematic transformation under way and as representing the miraculous possibility of the Communist episode metamorphosing into democracy.

Having ascertained how important it was to produce the proper impression on Western politicians, President Nazarbayev cultivated his image as a progressive and enlightened monarch from the steppes of Kazakhstan. This task was greatly facilitated because Western guests, who arrived in Kazakhstan to denounce his authoritarianism and censorship, conveniently forgot their mission as soon as it came to the issue of oil contracts. The President of Kazakhstan simply bought them off, just as he had liquidated his national dissidents.

Kazakhstan's great reserve of natural resources has made this country the richest in Central Asia. Kazakhstan become wealthy and Nazarbayev had money for everything. He generously pumped funds into the hands of dissidents and Kazakh students with a revolutionary outlook, including those who returned from foreign universities. Caring for his positive image in the West, President Nazarbayev invited the best and most expensive public-relations specialists, propagandists and lobbyists in the world. His good reputation helped the Kazakh Khan do business in the West.

Abundant natural resources and the public-relations efforts of the Kazakh Khan made the West forget about President Nazarbayev's ruling style.

"Nothing is so upsetting to some Western politicians as their naive belief that everything is not so bad in Kazakhstan", Dr. Dosmukhamedov says. “Surely there is always something that can be even worse, but don't you think this is a silly argument?"

In fact, after each election in Kazakhstan monitors from Europe stated that the elections did not meet democratic standards, although they acknowledged their results.

Eternal President

"It is difficult not to be tempted", says Dr. Dosmukhamedov about his contemporaries, who stopped thinking about social changes in exchange for offers of promotion and the possibility of having a prosperous life.

Oil dollars have allowed President Nazarbayev to comfortably settle every student returning from foreign universities, in exchange for the obedience he demands.

Oil dollars enriched not only the elite but simple businessman, entrepreneurs, and farmers, who have enjoyed a comparatively good life after Soviet times. The Khan put forward only one condition - enrich yourself as much as you like but leave politics to me. In the list of the richest people in the world published in Forbes magazine, there are eight citizens of Kazakhstan, among them President Nazarbayev's daughter Dinara and his son-in-law Timur Kulibayev. For the last couple of years, the middle class in Kazakhstan has grown so that it now comprises almost a quarter of the population.

"Oil is our blessing as well as our curse", says Dr. Dosmukhamedov. "The state and the economic system of Kazakhstan are built on oil, and this is the only reason Kazakhstan is staying afloat. It is the main way in which organisations prosper, and it causes some Western politicians to loose both their sanity and their moral conscience. They want to act as teachers of democracy and freedom when they arrive in Kazakhstan, but they soon forget all about this and become strictly interested in petrodollars. For them, Kazakhstan is just a colony of raw materials. They are not embarrassed by a dictator, as long as he sells them oil".

President Nazarbayev has always been dreaming about Kazakhstan as the first post-Soviet country to receive the OSCE chairmanship. Western leaders were against it, saying that the OSCE can't admit as a leader a country that has never held fair elections, and whose leader supports the so-called Chinese way of development, according to which profit maximization prevails over civil freedom.

President Nazarbayev's efforts to obtain the chairmanship of the OSCE were even supported by former U.S. President Bill Clinton after his visit to Astana. President Nazarbayev contributed generously to his fund. The American government also changed its point of view after President Nazarbayev's visit to Kennebunkport, the seaside summer retreat of his old friend George H.W. Bush.

The dream of the Kazakh Khan came true last year in the autumn. OSCE member countries conditionally decided that in 2010 Kazakhstan will chair the organization. To fulfill this honour, President Nazarbayev will have to carry out democratic reforms that the Kazakh Khan has solemnly promised.

In particular, he promised to reform the constitution by limiting the President's power, so that it would correspond more closely to European constitutions. President Nazarbayev also promised to allow the registration of opposition parties that emerged without his consent.

After this, however, the deputies in Parliament decided to repeal the constitutional limitation on the term of the President, on the ground that President Nazarbayev's merits legitimized his ruling the country for as long as he likes.

Murder? Suicide!

Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov notes that the required 50,000 signatures were collected to register the centre-right Atameken Party, in accordance with the Political Parties' Law. By the end of 2006, all necessary documents had been submitted to the Ministry of Justice. But a month later, authorities stated that the registration process had stopped, so the government neither consented to nor rejected the party's request. When he wanted to take part in the popular television program Serious Talk, the program was withdrawn from the air at the last moment. Besides Atameken, one other opposition party is waiting for registration - Alga (Onward). "In striving for the chairmanship in the OSCE, our regime has deceived the West. It has promised everything that the democratic community wanted to hear but it intended to do everything as it liked", states Dr. Dosmukhamedov. He emphasized that before the country obtains the chairmanship in the OSCE, it is necessary to make President Nazarbayev fulfill all that he has promised.

The Kazakh Khan had not foreseen that wealth, which it seems should only have distracted vigilant citizens, suddenly also gave them the feeling of independence. More self-assured and believing in their luck, oligarchs were annoyed with the omnipotence of the President.

Before Dr. Dosmukhamedov passed the registration documents to the Ministry of Justice and his party's registration application at the end of 2006, an ex-Minister of President Nazarbayev, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, had died in his house in Almaty. Before his death, he had accused the President of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from American oil companies. expelled from the government, he joined the opposition and promised to reveal the compromising documents concerning President Nazarbayev. Officially it was announced that Nurkadilov had committed suicide, but that did not explain why he was shot twice in the breast and then received another shot to the head.

Some months later in a car on the roadside near Almaty, the corpse of another Kazakh opposition leader was found. This time the public prosecutors expressed the opinion that Altynbek Sarsenbayev was killed in a hunting accident, though it is not clear again why the corpse was found in a car together with the driver and the security guard, both of whom had had their hands bound and had been shot in the back of the head.

After the murders, Dr. Dosmukhamedov left for Europe. "I will come back when the party is registered", Dosmukhamedov said. "This would be the proof that something has really been changed in Kazakhstan".

Godfather-in-law

Last year, turmoil gripped the family of President Nazarbayev's son-in-law, Rakhat Aliyev, husband of his elder daughter Dariga, who announced that after Nazarbayev's retirement he would apply for the President's post. When he learned that Khan Nazarbayev was not thinking about retiring, he called him a dictator. President Nazarbayev in turn deprived his son-in-law of the post of ambassador in Vienna, and ordered his daughter to divorce her husband immediately. He also announced an international search for his son-in-law who, so the authorities explained, took advantage of the kindness and trust of the sovereign and had created a Mafia organization. In January, a Kazakhstan court sentenced him in a sentia to long-term imprisonment for thefts and kidnapping. In June, Aliyev announced he would publish a book about President Nazarbayev in which the whole world would find out who was the true Mafioso. The book exposing the Kazakhstan sovereign will be published under the title Godfather-in-Law.

On the advice of his entourage, in April President Nazarbayev had an interview with a correspondent from the Reuters news agency. A long, sincere conversation with a journalist from one of the most popular news services, as they thought, should have restored the President's image that had been damaged by the scandals and accusations.

On a question about the causes of the slow political changes in Kazakhstan, President Nazarbayev replied that changes in politics must take place only after economic reforms. Otherwise the whole process would be turned into chaos. President Nazarbayev rejected the thoughtless copying of the democratic Western model.

"East of us is located China, Northward - Russia, in the South - the Muslim world", said President Nazarbayev. "None of them is rushing to be like the European models. They have their own traditions and conditions. We should also think about this in Kazakhstan".

"In this case, he should have been asked why he longed so much to head the most important European organization, OSCE", Dr. Dosmukhamedov commented ironically.

Interviewed by Wojciech Jagielski