Proposed election law changes in Kazakhstan stand to curtail independent monitoring

Ibragim Alibekov

Proposed changes to Kazakhstan’s election law are facing criticism from non-governmental organization activists, who contend that the government seeks to greatly reduce the ability of independent observers to monitor 2004’s parliamentary election.

Kazakhstani authorities published the proposed election code amendments in early July, saying they sought to promote public debate about the measures. Washington, DC-based observers said that the Kazakhstani government could revise the amendments before submitting them for parliamentary approval.

The existing draft’s most conspicuous proposal – the alteration of a financing provision -- would affect the ability of Kazakhstani NGOs to mount election monitoring efforts. The provision would also limit independent opinion polling and media coverage during an election campaign. Under the proposed amendments, those organizations and NGOs that receive external financial support would be barred from deploying election observers or publishing polling data.

Specifically, the provision would "forbid any direct or indirect financing of sociologists, independent observers and journalists of the Republic of Kazakhstan by international organizations, international NGOs, foreign governments, foreign legal entities and citizens." Election legislation, in its present form, prohibits direct financing of the election process by foreign entities.

NGO representatives, such as Natalia Chumakova, director of the Almaty-based Center for Democracy Support, said many civil-society-related NGOs in Kazakhstan depend on assistance from international organizations. Thus, a prohibition against foreign funding effectively means that parliamentary elections, now scheduled for 2004, would lack a substantive local independent monitoring effort. Chumakova was dismissive of a government pledge to finance an election monitoring initiative.

Some Central Asian political analysts believe that such changes to the election law would, in reality, not have much of an impact on the outcome of the parliamentary election. The government, they note, already possesses administrative and judicial instruments with which it could fix the outcome. The financing provision, if adopted, would merely confirm that the prospects for civil society development over the medium term remain bleak, they add.

Elections to regional legislative bodies in Kazakhstan are scheduled for September 20. The vote is being held under the existing legislation. The new provisions would likely take force before the parliamentary vote, observers say.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has not yet publicly commented on the draft amendments. However, EurasiaNet has learned that Zagipa Baliyeva, Kazakhstan’s Central Election Committee chief, made one-day trip in late August to ODIHR headquarters in Warsaw for discussions.

At about the same time that Baliyeva was holding talks at ODIHR headquarters, Maksut Narikbayev, a former prosecutor general who is reputedly a staunch ally of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, announced the establishment of a Public Committee for Election Control. The new body, Narikbayev said, would maintain an independent political position and seek to promote free and fair votes. Political analysts in Almaty consider the committee to be an artificial creation, designed by the government to create the appearance of an independent monitoring initiative and thus blunt potential international criticism.

Nazarbayev, during a September 2 appearance before parliament, expressed support for changing the election law. Other officials insist that the proposed election law amendments were prepared with input from NGOs and from opposition political parties. NGO representatives and opposition politicians dispute this contention, however. A representative of the main opposition, Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan asserted that the large majority of suggestions coming from outside the government were ignored.

Some political analysts view the proposed election law draft amendments as part of an overall political blueprint designed by Nazarbayev to cement what some have termed "authoritarian democracy" into place in Kazakhstan. Such a system is enabling the president and his close allies to enhance their political and economic control over the country while maintaining a democratic facade.

At least one observer, however, suggests that the president’s current policies are alienating too many people in Kazakhstan. Such a process, especially the economic stratification of society, could create conditions that ultimately lead to upheaval in Kazakhstan’s political order.

"It is a historical paradox that the former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Kazakh Communist Party [Nazarbayev] ... who with his own hands destroyed the republican [Communist] party organization ... is now reviving it by speeding up social differentiation in the country and strengthening the social base of such differentiation," said a commentary published August 29 by the Respublika newspaper.

"The brainlessness of authorities ... who clamp down not only on the left opposition, but also on the bourgeois-democratic parties that hold a position in the center, make the revival of communist ideology more probable," the newspaper analysis continued.

Editor’s Note: Ibragim Alibekov is the pseudonym for a Kazakhstani journalist

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav090203.shtml