KZBlog

Much as I don’t want to disparage people from voting for any candidate on Sunday, this interview with Gani Kasymov of the Patriot’s Party from 1999, when he was also running for President on KTK is pretty amusing.

While Eurasianet hits a lot of the highlights, they missed the moment at 2:28 when the journalist asks, “You said in an interview with Karavan that you would mercilessly put people in prison? Maybe that was a mistake?” There’s a good 5 second pause before Kasymov answers that he might have misspoken but that we have too much disorder and corruption and criminals have to be dealt with harshly. Worth seeing through to the end when the flowers start flying (If this looks staged to you, there are rumors that it took 4 takes to get it right).

What is amazing is that the journalist, while respectful, does ask some difficult and aggressive questions of the then-head of the Customs Committee. Hard to imagine that happening in today’s environment.

While I may have hurt Kasymov’s chances for winning, his Patriot’s Party did join the 2020 coalition to keep the President in power until 2020, so he presumably won’t be too upset if he loses to the incumbent. And in the interests of equal time, here’s a brief summary of all the candidates’ platforms.

Thanks to Chris Merriman for bringing this to my attention.