POLITICS

Erbulat SEYLEKHANOV

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Erbulat Seylekhanov, Ph.D. (Political Science), leading analyst at the Investment Profitability Research Agency (Almaty, Kazakhstan)

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The year 2005 marked a turning point in the country’s social and political life: the systemic disproportions between the levels of economic and political changes brought Kazakhstan to a crossroads. For some time the liberalization rates in the economy outstripped the changes in the social and political spheres, which, in turn, created deeply rooted structural contradictions, having a considerable impact on the stability of the state and society. A visible manifestation of these disproportions was the split inside the elite in power, the appearance of a relatively strong (compared with the 1990s) and well-organized opposition, and the more insistent demands for political liberalization and socialization of the state. Due to certain specifics of the country, which is often described as a “super-presidential republic,” the president was the only political entity able to change the situation. For this reason, in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election, government/opposition relations came to the fore in domestic politics in 2005, while sociopolitical organizations were busy drawing up the country’s future strategies.

By early 2005, the political balance was the following: the parliamentary election in the fall of 2004 brought victory to the pro-presidential parties—the Republican Political Party Otan (Fatherland), the Republican Party Asar (All Together), the election bloc AIST (made up of the Civic and Agrarian parties), and the Democratic Party of Kazakhstan. They took nearly all the seats in the parliament. The moderate opposition represented by the Democratic Ak Zhol Party of Kazakhstan (the Road of Light) received one seat, which it declined as a matter of……………..

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