Kazakhstan: Slow Motion Reform or Continuity of the Status Quo?

In his first state of the nation address on September 2, 2019, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev lauded his predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev – officially still and forevermore First President of Kazakhstan and Leader of the Nation – for building Kazakhstan into a “stable and reputable state.” Turning to his own rule, which had begun after Nazarbayev’s surprising spring resignation and a snap election held in June 2019, Tokayev declared:

Today, we are able to double the achievements of our independence and to bring our country to a qualitatively new stage of development. 

We can achieve this by maintaining the continuity of the policy of the Leader of the Nation and through systemic reforms.

“Continuity” and “reform” in the same sentence is the very definition of cognitive dissonance. But in the view of the Kazakh political elite, of which Tokayev is now the center but Nazarbayev the ultimate progenitor, Kazakhstan’s path was purposefully trod to secure economic stability and then make democratic progress. That was Nazarbayev’s vision, or so the argument goes.

But a closer look at at least one prominent “reform” – revisions to the country’s protest laws and their application – undercuts the pitch that having achieved economic stability, the state is in earnest pursuing democratic progress.

In that first Tokayev state of the nation address, improving legislation on rallies and protests was on the list of steps to be taken toward “political transformation.” After discussing party building and citizen feedback, Tokayev said of rallies: “If peaceful protests do not pursue the goal of violating the law and the peace of citizens, then they should be embraced and given approval for them to be carried out in the manner prescribed by law, to allocate special places for this. And not in the outskirts of cities.”

He clarified further: “But any calls for unconstitutional and hooligan actions will be dealt with within the framework of the law.”

Kazakhstan did, indeed, embark on a process to change its legislation on assemblies, rallies, and protests. Thousands were arrested during protests that erupted around the June 9, 2019 presidential election, a trend that continued. Even as a National Council of Public Trust got to work on reforming the law, it was eyed with suspicion from many activists and boycotted by the most prominent opposition organizations. Alnur Ilyashev, an activist who has been jailed multiple times, told Eurasianet in 2019, “They always do this during political crises and it never brings about real changes.” Various councils over the years have failed to deliver measurable changes.

When Kazakhstan’s new “Law On Peaceful Assemblies” was a draft in late April 2020, a constellation of human rights organizations penned an open letter to Tokayev raising concerns about the “reformed” legislation. Among the critiques, activists focused on a useless shift from requiring organizations to secure “permission” for a rally to mandating a “notification” of the relevant authorities about a rally, which the authorities could then still deny permission for. Whatever language the law used, the effect remained the same: The state could easily veto protests it preferred to not occur and activists holding a protest anyway could still be arrested.

In May 2020, the draft became law with the notification language intact. Clement Nyaletsossi Voule, a U.N. envoy on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, had dubbed it “a de facto approval procedure.”

In the months since, protesting has remained a difficult endeavor in Kazakhstan. In February – importantly, before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in Kazakhstan – authorities disrupted rallies organized by an unregistered political party. The protests were orchestrated by the Democrtic Party after its plans to hold a founding congress (necessary to register as a party) in Almaty were disrupted by the state. Members of the group had been preemptively detained on their way to Almaty or otherwise dissuaded from attending.

Denis Krivosheev, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said at the time, “Kazakhstan’s already poor human rights record has just got even worse. This cowardly campaign of intimidation against critics shows how badly the government fears freedom of expression.”

The pandemic played right into Nur-Sultan’s hands, adding another reason for the authorities to disrupt protests or arrest regime critics. Ilyashev, quoted above, was jailed for two months in April for posting harsh criticisms of the government’s pandemic response on Facebook. The government argued his posts “endangered public order” during the country’s state of emergency.

While the pandemic has further depressed the ability (and wisdom) of people trying to organize public protests, the authorities continue to laud their reforms as successful.

In his 2020 state of the nation address in early September, Tokayev mentioned the resulting protest legislation once – as “new in its democratic essence” – and made no other mention of protests or rallies. In the state’s view, the problem of protests has been fixed by the new legislation.

Meanwhile, the “reform” march moves on. Tokayev called for a “reset” of state structures in his latest state of the nation address, and introduced yet another a new body – the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reform – to plot and carry out “necessary reforms.” One mentioned reform echoes what activists have been calling for for many years: the direct election of governors. But Tokayev referenced “rural governors” alone as the target for direct election. In Kazakhstan, governors (known as akims) of provinces and major cities, are appointed by the president. Topline akims then appoint municipal and district akims. On one hand, the direct election of district akims would be “reform”; but it would be just a fraction of the reform asked for by Kazakh activists.

The pairing of continuity with reform in Kazakhstan has come to mean marginal changes that serve to prop up the status quo.