KZBlog

I was asked to participate in a cross-blog survey with New Eurasia to predict what Central Asia will look like in 15 years. You can check out the other posts here. And my little dichotomious view is below. I couldn’t come to any solid and concrete conclusions so I ended up with perhaps more of a range of views of how to take Kazakhstan. I really look forward to comments.

The akim of Semey woke up on Independence Day in 2021 in his newly finished residence. The bedroom was gilt in gold, with rich wallpaper based on a 17th century bedroom he’d seen recreated in the British Museum when he studied at LSE. Through the transparent curtains he could see Abay tower, the second tallest tower in Kazakhstan with an observatory on top, and offices of the local Social-Business Corporation, the akimat, and the new Narodnii Bank offices—everything in Italian marble, wireless internet throughout the building, in short the latest technology and comfort!

It had taken a lot of doing to get it done in time for the 16th of December—but as they said every beam in town was put together by his mat, and he had plenty to go around. He remembered back fifteen years ago when the central government held the budget strings so tightly and being akim was basically carrying out the orders of the President. Then, Astana was the only prestigious city in the country. Now thanks to unintended consequences of some projects and development plans, the government had begun to see the necessity of decentralizing control. Now it was almost impossible to imagine giving up more than 50% of the money he collected to the central government. Opening up regional companies to invest in capital markets had made the fines and taxes he could collect a lot larger. That meant prestige projects like the tower and his new residentsia! Ak Orda was already 15 years old but his ‘left bank’ was new and even more up to date. That kind of one-upping the President would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. And since they had moved to a new experimental system where the people voted for akims out of nominees of the President and the Parliament, it was almost as important to keep the people happy as it was to obey the President.

He rose and washed his face in a washbasin in the room. It was something that the President’s nephew had had in his room at Oxford and now every one had a water closet in their bedrooms. Since the British oil companies started investing in Kazakhstan, and architects started showing interest and the Irish Celtic tiger example was endorsed by the Prime Minister, Britain was the hot new thing! He came down to the dining room for breakfast; where he had invited the members of Parliament to join him as well as some of the heads of local companies, so that they could organize the day’s events.

The President of the local Social Business Corporation turned to him and said, “Well, I don’t think the opening of the new Left Bank attracted this much attention.’

The akim smiled and answered, “Well the Left Bank opened bit by bit, we’ve spent five years constructing and now everything will open at once. We also didn’t make the same mistakes. Remember 12 years ago? Everything was done in Astana. The Khan’s tent had opened with its beaches and its tropical forests. The Northern Lights, the giant towers. Impressive, but they’d used up all their plans and driven it all to be completed so fast. There was nothing left to build. Sure they’re still cleaning up Cheubara of all those ugly little houses and putting up nice apartment buildings, but they raised the bar too high too. After the Pyramid, for example, or Highville, a nice normal clean apartment complex looked stupid. We put up a few prestige projects and most of it is just decent housing or shopping. Plus we planned out this part but the surrounding lands will be developed entirely privately.”

The city representative in the Mazhilis said, “Well, so was Astana! It was all private!’

The akim laughed, “No this time we mean actually private companies. Can you believe we’ve intiated a transparent bidding and tender system? No, I’m serious. There’s a lot of competent companies out there we’ve never heard of.”

“Which one does your brother own?”

“My brother is Director of Department of Corporate Development at KazMunaiGas, he doesn’t have time to build!”

The representative of Otan stood up and asked to lead a toast.

“Dear Friends and Colleagues, partners in the economic development of our country, it has been 30 years of independence and we have seen that the path of the First President was justified by history. With a strong center we have built a strong economy and a unified governnment. Once we had so many political parties—Asar, AIST, the Civil Party, Kazakhs for Kazakhstan, Atamken, Bilim, the Communist Party. Now we all sit at one table and rationally and objectively run the country and divide the resources of the nation, without playing politics or worrying about blocking each other for personal gain. We are all on one page, on one team, and the nation’s gain is our personal gain. The development of these new regional capitals, like Semey, is proof that a strong central government means wealth for all. As long as our politics are all one, we can let the regions have money to make the country beautiful and to increase our prestige abroad. So ‘bottoms up’ as they say.”

One of the deputaty stood after everyone had clinked piali and asked to answer his collegues’ toast, “I am sure the local head of Otan meant no offence when he forgot that East Kazakhstan oblast has two deputats from the Farm Union Party, which has seen no reason to join the Otan block. While we are also proud of the country’s development and look to a prosperous future, I have never fully understood how it is possible to maintain a strong center and strong regions and it seems to me, you still play politics of the early days of independence. Already the changes have begun and this 30th year of Independence is proof of it. Before, Astana might have squashed the renovation of Semey for fear it would outshine the capital. Now thanks to new budget codes I don’t think the government could stop our host even if they wanted to. The prosperity has trickled out to the oblasts and regions and I think you will find it is no longer the case that the rich, the politically powerful and the famous are all in bed together.

Today a young man, back from studying on the Bolashak Scholarship at MIT is founding a company with the help of the akim’s Small Business office and the Innovation Fund and in five years he will be rich and respected even though his family is poor and doesn’t know anyone in the capital. At one point, such people only managed to fall through loopholes of the system. No one imagined a poor badly connected kid would ever be able to compete for a grant from the Innovation Fund or get into MIT! Now it’s become the norm. So many new “teams” have sprung up that it doesn’t even make sense to talk about teams. We have become a democratic society while the older generation still sits and drinks vodka at their dastarkhany. That is our country’s development and its future. To that we should all drink.”