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NEWNATIONS BULLETIN 17 MARCH 2010
KAZAKHSTAN & OSCE
This giant area of Eurasia, vaguely known to historical geographers as Tartary, borders on both Russia and China and is on good terms with both. It is a significant state in terms of size and wealth and seeks to stand to central Asia as a business and investment powerhouse, as Singapore does to SE Asia, and Dubai to the Gulf.
For reasons best known to its all-powerful president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, this nation set out to become the leader, by means of the 2010 chairmanship, of OSCE a leading advocate and instrument of democratic values, so necessarily a frequent critic of Kazakhstan (as are several other agencies specialising on key aspects of human rights, political rights and government corruption).
Our current Worldaudit Democracy Survey ranks Kazakhstan (out of 150 nation states) at 125th, also 125th in Press Freedom, and 94th in Corruption.
(These are better scores than achieved by the other four FSU Central Asian states - but they did not seek to lead the OSCE!)
Newnations and its predecessor “Russia Express” have been covering the political and economic affairs of Kazakhstan since the 1990’s, so we were surprised that Kazakhstan with such a track record and with sparse evidence that it was reforming, should so open itself to possible humiliation. This surprise was equalled (for the same reasons), when we learned that certain Washington DC geopolitical institutes had accepted commissions from Kazakhstan’s American PR consultants, to produce preparatory reports on that nation, prior to their taking up the 2010 OSCE chairmanship.
At that point we decided to produce the attached independent report to provide, at no fee, some sort of balance, based on information all of which is in the public domain.
Our conclusion is reflected in the title of this article, because it seems to us that to the average ‘Kazakh on the steppe,’ governance in their country has reverted to the pre-Soviet, pre-Tsarist system common to all of central Asia then, of a self-perpetuating ruling family of ‘khans’, who control all power, most of the wealth, and to a large extent the destiny of all of its people.
If Kazakhstan keeps the promises made to those nations that sponsored them to the OSCE chair, then this would lead to better democratic results and a degree of respect. We wait and only hope that it shall be so, and will report again in due course.
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Also published on our blog: GEOPOLEMICS where readers comments are invited
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