KZBlog

I was watching the news today on Khabar and I caught a Ministry of the Interior official saying something about how the incident would be investigated thoroughly. He also warned that the opposition was not the opposition, but ordinary citizens with the same responsbilities as any other citizen and that no one had the right to interrupt the stabilty of the country, or push for armed revolt or anything of that kind. There was also something about having spotted followers of Tuyakbai or not having spotted followers of Tuyakbai–I admt I got lost. I assumed he was speaking of the murder of Nurkadilov, but now I see on RFE/RL

“that two nephews of opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbaev have been hospitalized after three off-duty police officers severely beat them yesterday

. Sarsenbaev we will remember from just before last year’s parlimentary elections is co-chairman of Ak Zhol, a pro-Presidential opposition party, so to speak. He was appointed Minister of Information just before the elections, and then essentially forced to step down in order to not appear to be using his post. A number of controversial reforms to the press were being proposed at that time in response to claims that opposition were not getting equal time and that the President’s family had too strong a hold on the media.

Sarsanbaev is being cautious:

“I’m waiting for the end of the investigation,” Sarsenbaev said. “If police try to shield them [police officers involved in the incident], then we have to consider it as politically motivated incident. If they are punished in accordance with law, then we can consider it as an incident perpetrated by police officers acting as a bandits.”

Again, the sad part is that what had promised to be a peaceful election is getting ugly.

The 14 year old daughter of Yelena Nikitina, who works on Tuyakbai’s campaign, is apparently still missing.

We remember that earlier Tuyakbai and his supporters were pelted by rocks when they tried to meet in different parts of the country. And after that there was relative peace.

I will at some point in the next few days review the pre-election scene in Astana, including how I failed to get a Nazarbayev cap and shirt even though I pretended to be a law student…