Tired and left

Nursultan Nazarbayev, who ruled Kazakhstan for almost 30 years, resigned his presidential powers. But power is still in his hands

The last acting president on the Eurasian continent, which came to power under the Soviet Union, Nursultan Nazarbayev led Kazakhstan for almost 30 years, and in 2015 - in the last elections - received 97.75% of the vote. And in 2020, as it seemed, he would go to new elections.

True, already in 2018 people began to suspect something:

Nazarbayev “reflash” the government scheme and strengthened the security council, endowing the chairman by powers almost large than the head of state.

In addition, Nazarbayev has a presidential party, which a little less than completely controls the parliament. And still, his departure on March 19 at 2019 at 19 pm was a complete surprise to the whole country.

Nazarbayev went live during the appeal to the nation.

In the Habar 24 hardware television channel, they forgot to turn off the sound, so after the first words of Nazarbayev about the resignation of the frame, an excited sigh and a cry of “Yo-mine!” Rang out.

The President of Kazakhstan announced the decision to leave his post, because, in his own words, he did everything so that the republic recovered from the consequences of the collapse of the USSR and entered the world arena as a large player.

At the same time, Nazarbayev emphasized that “until the end of his days” will remain in sight - just as the head of the Security Council. At the same time, he sees his main task by holding future elections so that his course is continued. In the meantime, the acting president will be the speaker of the Senate Kasym-Zhomart Tokaev, he will bring the oath in the morning of March 20.

Nazarbayev’s task is non -trivial, because over 30 years in power he masterfully removed all large figures from the political board of Kazakhstan, but at the same time he did not leave a single politician who could be fully called a successor.

In the first approximation, the most obvious figure on the throne, the eldest daughter of President Darig Nazarbayev, deputy of the Senate. Formally, nothing prevents her from moving in the nearest elections. Another question is that several scandals have been associated with the name Nazarbayeva recently. The last report of human rights activists from the “Eurasian Democratic Initiative” was dedicated to the fact that the president’s daughter could take tens of millions of dollars to Austria (Dariga herself did not comment on the report). In addition, Dariga Nazarbayeva has little direct experience in the manager: she has never been akim ( the head of the administration in Kazakhstan - ed. ), Nor the speaker of the parliament.

This, of course, is not so important if Nursultan Nazarbayev points her finger at her-especially taking into account the fact that he still remains with a large number of powers and

In the status of the head of the Council of Security, any presidential action can block.

But the lack of an alternative can play a cruel joke with the design of the Nazarbayevsky regime. The president, who has retired, still holds all the power structures in his hands, and also endowed them with the authority in any incomprehensible situation to include the regime of information blockade in the country. But even among the security forces there are at least equal naughty Nazarbayevo - for example, the head of the National Security Committee Karim Masimov. The whole question is exclusively about whether he will hold his ambitions (Masimov-a former prime minister) in order to preserve the entire structure.

The most important thing is that the situation in Kazakhstan is now not as rosy as Nazarbayev painted in his farewell handling. Yes, the country has the capital of Astana, which resembles either Dubai, or Paris, or all together - but social discontent is growing in other cities. Yes, and in Astana it is restless: in winter, five girls were burned out in the winter, whose parents were forced to go to work at night - and this led to an unprecedented social explosion and protests throughout the country.

It got to the point that with the demand for Nazarbayev’s resignation, women in the regions even came to the reception of the presidential party - in recent years in recent years.

The president then in a hurry dismissed the government - for the first time in history - but this did not help, since people felt the weakness of the leader of the nation and only strengthened their pressure.

In the world stage, all Nazarbayev’s achievements fled before the murder in 2018 in the center of Almaty of the winner of the Olympics in Sochi for Figure Skating Denis Ten: it became obvious that under the rainbow window the level of internal chaos became poorly controlled. In addition, Nazarbayev did not dare to remove the Minister of Internal Affairs of Kalmukhanbet Kasymov, which incurred even more criticism. Ordinary residents of the country will never forgive Nazarbayev Zhanaozen: in 2011, after a large -month strike of oil workers in the west of the country, police officers opened fire on demonstrators, killing at least 17 people (they unofficially increase the list of victims to a hundred people).

And the main mistake was the complete stripping of the opposition, which made the regime completely ossified (all attempts to go out onto the streets were suppressed harshly - until the detention of journalists in 2016). Nazarbayev’s main enemy, the fugitive oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov, was sentenced to life imprisonment at home in absentia, but remained invulnerable to the regime.

On the other hand, although for supporters of the same Ablyazov and any dissatisfied citizens, Nazarbayev’s care is considered a victory, here the first Kazakhstan president outwitted, it seems, all. He still retained the power levers, but at the same time a little less than he completely wrapped his reputation. Now he will be remembered not as a strangler of freedom or a person who boasts with his achievements in the world arena with a personality cult, but as a person who voluntarily left, albeit not the most important, but still the first post in the country.

Nursultan Nazarbayev fulfilled his desire to go down in history by the winner.