A New President – A New Country?: How Nazarbayev’s Resignation Will Effect Foreign Policy of Kazakhstan
Nursultan Nazarbayev in his address to the people announced his resignation from the position of the President of the country and signed a related decree on Tuesday, March 19. The politician will remain chairman of the Security Council of the republic. Nazarbayev will also remain at the head of the Nur Otan party and will be a member of the Constitutional Council of the republic. Nazarbayev is the first and only president of the republic since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The speaker of the upper chamber of Kazakhstan’s parliament, Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev, officially takes office as acting president. President of Kazakhstan will take the oath at the meeting of Parliament. Nursultan Nazarbayev, who headed the republic since 1990, called the successor “an honest, responsible and obliging person” who knows the country.
The eldest daughter of Nursultan Nazarbayeva Dariga became the speaker of the Senate of Kazakhstan. Since 2016, Dariga Nazarbayeva has been a member of the Senate of the Republic. Prior to that, she was a deputy of the lower house, served as vice speaker of the Majilis, was deputy prime minister of Kazakhstan.
The head of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots Leonid Kalashnikov in an interview with NSN called the expected resignation of the President of Kazakhstan, he noted that rumors about this had been going a long time.
“The elites have been talking about this for a long time. The creation of the so-called State Council announced the possibilities for the early departure of Nazarbayev. Someone said that there may be some personal reasons for this. I believe that all this happened, and in the end, the president made the decision himself. He is quite a responsible and capable politician. Recently, I have seen speeches in which his will was clearly seen. Including, at the moment when Nazarbayev quite recently dismissed the government, ” said Kalashnikov.
The leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said that after Nazarbayev left the post of the head of Kazakhstan, the republic would turn into a battlefield on which the global conflict of interests would unfold. The politician warned that an anti-Russian scenario is possible.
“There will be pro-Russian forces fighting for Kazakhstan. Pro-American, pro-European. These are three. Pro-Chinese – four, pro-Islamist – five. And pro-Uzbek, Central Asian. Here are six clans will start the fight. The Uighurs will begin arming, the Kazakhstan-China border will become hectic. There have always been controversial issues with Uzbekistan. There they can create a second Ukraine for us: the nationalists will switch to the Latin alphabet, they will finally squeeze out the Russians. Changes for the worse are quite possible, ” Zhirinovsky said on the air of the National Socialist Party.
The First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs and Relations with Compatriots Konstantin Zatulin on the air of the NSN urged not to be deluded by the level of cooperation between Kazakhstan and Russia. He noted that the republic is doing everything possible to abstract itself from Russia and look independent.
The figure named by Nursultan Nazarbayev is a locum tenens but not a successor. This opinion was expressed by Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries, in an interview with NSN. For 30 years of being in power, Nazarbayev has probably thought over who will continue his policy without changing the vector for good neighborly relations with Russia, Vladimir Zharikhin told NSN.
“Of course, Nazarbayev’s departure from the presidency will make certain corrections in the relationship, but I think it’s insignificant, because over the past 30 years he has thought out who he can offer to his successor so that the policy pursued by Nazarbayev continues. And the policy pursued by Nazarbayev was, among other things, aimed at the most friendly relations with the Russian Federation, ” Zharikhin said.
