Aug 19 2007

Pure Personality Politics

Category: In The Media,Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 11:04 pm

Now the voting process has been completed, I feel a little more comfortable linking to a story the BBC ran on Friday. For those too tired to click on it, Natalia Antelava describes how she sees Kazakhstan’s president (Nursultan Nazarbayev) as a man in complete control of a stable country. The nation’s oil reserves have secured Kazakhstan’s income, where other countries in this region are still struggling. Whilst the middle class find their lifestyle improving, they is little urgency felt to changes the political landscape into a more democratized one. When people look across the border to the last (late) president of Turkmenistan, they see how much worse things could be; this country’s president, or his advisers, have been wise enough to see that excessive hero worship and cult status can run the risk of severely back firing. In terms of confidence in a nation, following the Soviet collapse in the 90s, this country is stable and although some people may wonder what a different president would be like after all these years, many fear that a new president, and his associated cronies would only lead to a new power base being established, with more resources being creamed off, and so an even longer wait for a fairer system.

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