KZBlog

EDIT: As of Tuesday, the 19th of June, Aliyev claims that the interview described below, in which he apologized to the Presdient was in fact a fake composed by the editors of “Vremya” newspaper. The editors are sticking to their guns. So maybe the announcement that the interview was fake, was in fact fake?

Rakhat Aliyev has apologized to the President for his scandalous statements of late, including those calling the President a dictator and those suggesting Kazakhstan was slipping into a dictatorship.

I want to answer personally before the president for the political statement made. I apologize to the president. That statement was made under the impact of very strong emotions…I would even say it was an emotional breakdown. The interior minister and the prosecutor general walked on me, accusing me of horrendous crimes. I can even say it was an emotional fit

Regarding his comments on the Constitutional amendment allowing Nazarbayev to run for President as many times as he likes, Aliyev says:

I only meant to say that Western politicians, with whom I discussed [Kazakhstan’s] presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, would not understand such an amendment. And opponents of our presidency could mishandle it, and the entire work done would become a wasteful effort

I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to check the record and decide if he meant to be as nasty to the President as he was, or if he was just stressed out for those two weeks.

Aliyev has lost more than his brief career as an opposition candidate for President, however. He has also lost his wife, claiming on Monday that he had been divorced from Dariga Nazarbayeva without his consent. And finally, Nazarbayeva will be buying a controlling interest in Nurbank–since Aliyev owns over 50% of the shares, she will have to be acquiring at least some of his.

Whether all of this was agreed to behind doors in exchange for a release from all criminal charges, or whether the powers that be have washed their hands of Aliyev remains to be seen. If his court case goes smoothly and he is cleared of all charges, we might view these recent unhappy events as a plea bargin of sorts. If not, it might well mean that Aliyev is no longer in favor. The greatest tragedy here is that everything is being done behind closed doors and it makes it that much harder for the people of Kazakhstan to trust their government or believe that the interests of the people are the primary motivation for the government’s actions