KZBlog

So the story about the misprinted tenge got picked up by Reuters, then MSNBC, and now every blog has a story about the silly Kazakhs who worry about Borat, but can’t even get their money right.

But Gazeta.kz, blissfully unaware of how widespread the news has gotten, has postedan article on the shame that higher officials don’t have knowledge of Kazakh. They pose two scenarios:

The first scenario. The 2,000 and 5,000 banknotes with the already famous misprint are issued. Discussions start among the users, that is mainly among citizens of Kazakhstan, that divide them into pro et contra groups.
In this case the money will become a pretext for the long dispute about advantages of the state language and a necessity of its use everywhere.
It is quite probable that a part of the population will assert the following: if there is a misprint even on the banknotes that are one of the main symbols of the statehood, can it really be used everywhere? And in this case the supporters of the state language will have a difficulty answering this question

The second scenario would be to recall the bills:

At the same time, taking this decision, the guilty for this negligence should be found as well. It will cause several dismissals of high ranking officials (and it will be an objective necessity, because the population is not going to accept half-measures, that is if any decision is going to be taken on the cancellation of the issue of the new banknotes, the second part of it – the dismissals of the guilty must also take place.)

The second negative part of this scenario is the financial burden related with a new allocation of funds for the printing of new banknotes.

I think in either case, both discussion about Kazakh and its role and the rolling of some heads, are likely. Silly that this has all distracted from the true atrocity…that hand looks so silly on the front of the bill. Really, whose going to notice the tail on the K, but the hand? It’s huge!