Following up on a favorite topic or ours, Sean Roberts emerges to write on Kazakhstan’s upcoming elections:
In my opinion, the lackluster attitude towards the elections is a product of the Rakhat Aliyev scandal, which already marks a significant victory for those often thought to be funding the “marionette-like” democratic battles in Kazakhstan. In many ways, therefore, these elections mark the end of an era that began in 2000-2001 with the first Rakhat Aliyev scandal and the rise of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DCK or, as it is called in Russian, DVK). This period has seen the emergence of unprecedented political competition within Kazakhstan’s elite and even within the Nazarbayev family (especially between the president’s son-in-laws). With Rakhat, the supposed root reason for the rise of this competition, now completely ostracized, there is question whether political competition in Kazakhstan will now be almost non-existent.
I’m with him in thinking Kazakh democracy is not yet down for the count, but it faces serious challenges. Earlier, while exploring the travails of Central Asia’s princesses, I had noted that Dariga Nazarbayeva had been forced out of the election because of her failed marriage to Aliyev. A commenter at the tail end of that piece, however, raised an interesting idea:
Has anyone given any wait to Rakhat Aliyev’s opinion that the whole divorce proceeding is just as much a sham as everything else? Like in other CIS countries, all the people in power [read:men] generally did terrible things to get there at one time or another, and will continue to do whatever is necessary to stay there. Thus, when a lackey is no longer in his superior’s good graces, there’s a convenient shopping list of indiscretions, crimes, and/or murders to point to as the reason for censure or arrest. The fact that everyone is likewise guilty is never raised, because it’s merely the old “Might Makes Right” ideal, except all dolled up as ‘democracy’ and ‘liberty,’ so there are court proceedings, journalistic exercises and planned interviews…
I guess what I’m saying is, what do you think the chances that Aliyev is actually taking the fall for something that was planned with the President’s knowledge, and now his wife is being dragged down with him?
Aside from being groundless speculation, I don’t think that’s impossible at all.
Moving beyond the specifics of Kazakhstan’s sham election is what this means for the OSCE. Roberts brings this up in saying the country’s previously shaky relationship with the OSCE’s election monitors will come to haunt them again, but at this point I would honestly be shocked if Kazakhstan gets the chairmanship. Enough supposedly respectable outlets, like The Economist, have used enough weird arguments to sufficiently poison the well, to say nothing of the very legitimate arguments against Kazakhstan’s potential membership (which to me relate more to Europe’s potential as an honest broker with Muslim countries than Kazakhstan as a dishonest chairman).
In the meantime it will be interesting to see how Kazakhstan ultimately handles this. No one doubts the election’s result; how everyone else responds will be another matter.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor.