Читать книгу Kazakhstan's Assassinated Democracy - Yerzhan Psy.D. Dosmukhamedov - Страница 5

Shall we keep living like this...

remaining the most pitiful of all

nations in the world?

Abai Qunanbaiuly

Dear Reader,

This collection includes my essential interviews and some other material published in the mass media after the Founding Convention of the Kazakhstan centre-right political party - the Atameken Party - held on 27 October 2006.

The four years that have passed since then are a historically short period. However, they were filled with dramatic events, not only for our young party but also for all of Kazakh society.

A list of just a few of the events that have occurred within the last four years would include the constitutional coup that endorsed the lifelong rule of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan being granted chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2010 because of hollow promises the Minister of Foreign Affaires, Marat Tazhin, made to the international democratic community and a storm of revealing printouts cataloguing telephone conversations between top government officials and pseudo-opposition leaders. They made a lot of issues more comprehensible, shed the light of transparency on the government's activities, and confirmed that sooner or later the cat would always be let out of the bag to reveal its true colours.

In contrast to the fragmented and hand-picked information provided to society through the filter of government censorship, the publications here present a complete and systematic picture of the Atameken Party.

They will offer you an opportunity to assess both the party's and its leader's position concerning key issues of politics, economy, law and international relations. Some of my interviews were denied publication, while others were printed only after they had been carefully sifted through the filter of censorship, or were presented in a distorted context.

Censorship and distortion not only infringed the party's rights and impaired my political rights under the Kazakhstan's constitution, but also misled public opinion and cast aspersions on our party. This is why the guidelines of our party - especially those dealing with the political system and the further development of the state - appeared in the foreign democratic press. Hence some publications from the foreign press have been included with this collection.

I did not intend my decision to publish this collection as a tribute to political verbosity, but rather as a commitment to providing every reader with an independent opportunity to analyse and make conclusions about the actual state of affairs in Kazakhstan, and to shatter the efforts undertaken by the state propaganda machine to stain the reputation of our party and myself as its chairman.

Over the past four years, the authoritarian and despotic ruling regime has undertaken efforts to misinform the public and erase the civil initiative of establishing a political platform for the nascent middle class, which is the backbone of any truly democratic society and a market-based economy.

The current ruling regime exerts a stranglehold on power, and is synonymous with a parasitic, inhumane and authoritarian regime with intrinsically transnational characteristics - which have been cruelly manifested in Pinochet's Chile, Saddam's Iraq and Romania under Ceausescu. It smashed into smithereens the hopes of all previous Kazakh generations, millions of whom died on battlefields fighting with conquerors and colonizers, or fell victim to famine and genocide imposed by Stalin's regime.

The Nazarbayev regime has stolen precious time from this and future generations, and the lion's share of their energy will be spent on restoring the position of Kazakhstan in the international economic and political sphere.

The goals of the Atameken Party are simple. They include the prosperity of Kazakhstan as a full-fledged member of the globalization process, rather than merely an appendage for raw exports. We stand for the revival of civil initiative, the transformation of a despotic state into one serving the public, true respect for human dignity and rights, spiritual resuscitation and restoration of justice and humane laws.

Moving towards these goals is the essence of human history. We will continue to make every effort to ensure that each citizen of Kazakhstan with creative potential and energy has the ability to take part in the formation of the genetic code of our restored sovereign state. We want an immediate and positive transformation in everyone's life, instead of waiting for an illusory happiness promised by officials every year, as they fatten themselves like gluttons feasting on the people's suffering and national resources.

This collection is not a pessimistic statement of yesterday's developments rather it aims to enhance discussion. Therefore, dear reader, your thoughts, comments and suggestions are welcome. Please e-mail them to our party's address: atameken.press.service@gmail.com.

In conclusion, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all members of the Atameken Party as well as friends, associates and patriots of our country for their support, courage, stamina, confidence, understanding and trust in the victory of our common cause.

Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov