Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government

The Constitution provides for a democratic government; however, in practice the Government severely limited the right of citizens to change their government. The Constitution concentrates power in the presidency, granting the President considerable control over the legislature, judiciary, and local government. The Constitution cannot be modified or amended without the consent of the President. In 1995 President Nazarbayev extended his term of office to 2000 by referendum without a contested presidential election (which, according to the Constitution then in force, should have been held in 1996).

The President appoints and dismisses the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. He has the power to dismiss Parliament and to rule by decree should he so choose. He appoints judges and senior court officials and appoints all regional governors. The President also directly appoints the chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the members of the Commission.

President Nazarbayev won a new term in office on January 10 in an election held nearly 2 years earlier than previously scheduled. The previous October, the President and the Parliament had passed in 1 day, without any prior public notice, a series of 19 constitutional amendments that enabled them 1 day later to call the early presidential election. Among other changes, the constitutional amendments extended the presidential term of office from 5 to 7 years and lifted the 65-year age limit on government service. (President Nazarbayev will be 65 before the end of his 7-year presidential term that began in January.) The constitutional amendments also extended the terms of Members of Parliament from 4 to 5 years for the lower house (Majilis), and from 4 to 6 years for the Senate. Government opponents and international observers criticized the short-notice call of early elections because it did not leave enough time for the Government to implement promised electoral reforms and for intending candidates to organize effective campaigns.

The Government imposed onerous requirements on candidates hoping to qualify for the presidential ballot. Candidates were required to submit petitions with approximately 170,000 signatures collected in equal proportions from at least 11 of the country's 14 regions. They also were required to pass a Kazakh-language test and to make a nonrefundable payment of 1,000 times the minimum monthly wage (approximately $30,000), although an equal sum was then provided to each registered candidate for campaign expenses. Although three candidates, in addition to President Nazarbayev, qualified for the ballot, two of them, Senator Engels Gabassov and Customs Committee Chairman Gani Kasymov, were known as supporters of the President and widely believed to be running at government behest.

In October 1998, less than a week after the early presidential election was called, the Government resorted to a provision of the presidential decree on elections, passed in May 1998, that prohibited persons convicted of administrative offenses from running for public office within 1 year of their conviction. A district court in Almaty summoned on less than 24 hours' notice 5 leading government opponents--former Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, former Social Democratic Party leader Dos Kushim, Pokoleniye Pensioners Movement leader Irina Savostina, Azamat movement co-chairman Petr Svoik, and Tabigat Ecological Movement leader Mels Yeleusizov--to face charges of participating in the October 1998 meeting of an unregistered organization called For Fair Elections (see Section 2.b.). The court convicted all five. Despite the judgment against him, Kazhegeldin, the strongest opposition candidate, applied for registration as a candidate in the presidential election. The presidentially appointed CEC disqualified his candidacy under the provision of the presidential decree on elections that then served as the election law. The Supreme Court upheld the disqualification. The CEC also used the election law provision to disqualify the presidential candidacy of Amantai Asylbek, leader of the Attan antinuclear testing movement, because of the 3-day jail sentence he received in February 1998 for participating in an unsanctioned demonstration.

The Government harassed the opposition throughout the presidential election campaign. According to credible reports, government agents repeatedly pressured managers of conference facilities to deny access at the last moment to government opponents who had arranged to use the facilities for meetings and press conferences. When opposition meetings and press conferences did take place, electricity at the facilities was often interrupted. Government attempts to disrupt opposition meetings appeared to have extended beyond national borders when management of a Moscow hotel withdrew permission at the last moment for a December 1998 opposition congress (see Section 2.b.). Communist Party leader Serykbolsyn Abdildin, the only candidate from the ranks of the preelection opposition who qualified for the presidential ballot, publicly complained that local officials loyal to the President impeded his attempts to hold campaign rallies and meetings.

Unsolved assaults on Kazhegeldin and two of his advisers appeared to have been politically motivated and, government critics alleged, sanctioned by the Government. In October 1998, two gunshots of unknown origin were fired near Kazhegeldin on the eve of the press conference at which he announced his presidential candidacy. Unknown assailants beat his press spokesman, Amirzhan Kosanov, and one of his public relations advisers, Yelena Nikitenko (see Section 1.c.). Several days before the attack, officials of the Al-Farabi national university in Almaty forced Nikitenko to resign from the faculty because of her political work. Government officials alleged that the Kazhegeldin campaign staged all three attacks. Following the announcement of Kazhegeldin's candidacy, the then first deputy chairman of the KNB held an unprecedented press conference at which he made admittedly unsubstantiated allegations of financial malfeasance against Kazhegeldin. The tax authorities brought an action against Kazhegeldin during the campaign and, according to credible reports, threatened actions against other government opponents. At a news conference, Kazhegeldin supporters showed videotape of police repeatedly pulling over Kazhegeldin's car for unspecified "inspections." Kazhegeldin also claimed that border control officials at the Almaty airport tried to prevent him and his family from taking a flight out of the country. An attack on a Kazakhstani employee of a foreign embassy also appeared to be motivated politically and, human rights observers believe, sanctioned by the Government. In December 1998, three men beat the employee outside his apartment as the employee returned home. The employee suffered a cracked rib, some internal injuries, and required stitches to close wounds near both eyes. The attackers made no attempt to take the employee's money or other valuables. The absence of robbery as a motive and the fact that the employee's responsibilities included assisting embassy officers in contacts with political opposition and human rights figures suggested that the attack was motivated politically. At year's end, the authorities had made no arrests in any of these cases.

The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OSCE announced in December 1998 that it would not meet the Government's request to send a presidential election observation mission. In its public explanation, the ODIHR cited concerns about the exclusion of two opposition candidates, unequal access to the media, and coerced support for President Nazarbayev. The ODIHR sent a small election assessment team to report to the OSCE on the full election process. The assessment team concluded that the presidential election fell "far short" of Kazakhstan's commitments as an OSCE participating state. It cited, in particular, the exclusion of candidates as an "infringement on rights of citizens to seek public office;" the short duration of the election campaign; obstacles to free assembly and association; the use of government resources to support President Nazarbayev's campaign; unequal access to the media; and the flawed presidential decree that served as the election law.

A newly elected bicameral legislature took office in December. The lower house (Majilis), consisting of 77 members, was elected directly in October. Under amendments to the Constitution passed in 1998, membership in the newly elected Majilis included 10 new seats assigned proportionally to political parties based on the percentage of votes they received nationally (with a minimum vote threshold of 7 percent). As before the other 67 seats were attributed by single mandate districts. The upper house (the Senate) consists of 39 members, 32 of whom are elected indirectly by members of oblast and city parliaments; the President appoints the remaining 7 senators. (The number of Senate seats was reduced from 42 in accordance with the Government's 1997 decision to reduce the number of oblasts from 19 to 14.) Elections were held in September for 16 Senate seats. The new election law, passed in May, requires candidates for both houses to meet minimum age and education requirements and to pay a nonrefundable registration fee of 25 times the minimum monthly wage (approximately $500--7,000 tenge). This fee represented a 75 percent decrease over previous registration fees, which opposition figures, human rights monitors, and the OSCE/ODIHR considered a barrier to participation. The election law does not require Majilis candidates to collect a certain number of signatures in order to be placed on the ballot; however, Senate candidates must obtain signatures from 10 percent of the members of the local assemblies in their oblasts in order to be placed on the ballot. Political parties wishing to compete for the 10 proportionally allocated seats in the Majilis must be registered nationally and in two-thirds of the principal administrative jurisdictions (the 14 oblasts, plus the former and new capital cities, Almaty and Astana). The Constitution mandates that participation in elections is voluntary. One of the constitutional amendments passed in October 1998 rescinded the requirement that at least 50 percent of eligible voters participate in order to make an election valid. Experts had cited the old requirement as one of the causes of fraud and vote inflation in past elections.

The legislature cannot exercise oversight over the executive branch. However, the Parliament has asserted itself with regard to the budget, for example, in June it rejected budget austerity measures proposed by the Government. The austerity measures subsequently passed automatically after the Prime Minister called for and won a confidence vote in Parliament. (The rules for votes of confidence give the Government a significant advantage in disputes over legislation with Parliament. Under the Constitution, a law that is the subject of a confidence vote automatically passes unless two-thirds of the full membership of each chamber vote "no confidence." Even when Parliament votes no confidence, the President has the constitutional option to dissolve Parliament.) Should Parliament fail to pass within 30 days an "urgent" bill brought by the President, the President may issue the bill by decree. While the President has broad powers to dissolve Parliament, Parliament can remove the President only for disability or high treason, and only with the consent of the Constitutional Council, which largely is controlled by the President.

Although the President has the right to legislate by decree, he respected the parliamentary procedures laid out in the Constitution. In June shortly before the Parliament was to adjourn for the summer, President Nazarbayev asked the Parliament to accord him full legislative authority in order to pass what he considered pressing legislation. The President withdrew his request when Parliament agreed to remain in session in July and take action during that month on 30 pieces of legislation deemed "urgent" by the President.

In 1998 the President vetoed a bill which would have established an independent auditing agency. The bill was reintroduction by Parliament, passed, and signed into law by the President in November 1998.

The introduction of 10 new parliamentary seats distributed by party-list vote enhanced the role of political parties, which, with the exception of the Communists, were previously very weak. The Communist Party and three propresidential parties--Otan (Fatherland), the Civic Party, and the Agrarian Party--divided the 10 new party-list seats in the October parliamentary election. No candidate nominated by a non-Communist opposition party won a seat in the new Parliament. One member of the opposition RNPK won a seat after running as an independent candidate. The RNPK withdrew its party-list slate after two of its candidates, Akezhan Kazhegeldin and Madel Ismailov, were declared ineligible. About one-half of the candidates who won ran as independents. Many of them were former government officials with strong presumed sympathy for progovernment parties.

Most activities of Parliament remained outside public view. In June Parliament barred the press and other outsiders from observing the vote of confidence in the Government. Final totals in the parliamentary vote of confidence were made public, but not the votes of individual members. The Parliament invited nongovernmental representatives to observe at least four meetings. Many draft bills were held closely and published in the press only after passage and signature by the President. Constituent relations were virtually nonexistent.

Although an improvement over the January presidential election, parliamentary elections held in September (for the Senate) and in October (for the Majilis) were marred by election law deficiencies, executive branch interference in the electoral process, and a lack of government openness about vote tabulations. There was strong evidence of government manipulation of results in some cases. The OSCE mission sent to observe the elections concluded that the elections were "a tentative step" toward democracy but "fell short of (Kazakhstan's) OSCE commitments." The OSCE also expressed concern that parliamentary runoff races were conducted just 2 weeks after first-round voting, which left no time for the CEC and the courts to act on hundreds of complaints filed about the conduct of first-round voting and the campaign.

A new election law, passed by Parliament in May and amended in June, replaced a presidential decree that had served as the election law. It lowered candidate registration fees by 75 percent, but failed to correct other deficiencies of the decree it replaced. The new law maintained a system of electoral commissions subject to regional and local government authorities, who appoint commission members. It failed to incorporate suggestions for creating a more open vote tabulation process. It also maintained provisions that bar candidates convicted of administrative offenses from running for office for 1 year.

The CEC issued regulations to ameliorate some of these deficiencies in time for the parliamentary elections, but the effects were limited. For example the CEC filled vacant seats on electoral commissions by lottery among all registered political parties. However, the initiative, affected only 25 percent of commissions and was limited to one seat per commission, which usually consist of seven members. Regulations that clarified the rights of election observers significantly improved the ability of observers to monitor vote counts at the precinct level. However, observers could not, in the end, use the information they obtained to corroborate official results. As of year's end, the CEC released comprehensive precinct- and district-level vote tallies for only 1 of 67 single-mandate districts, despite repeated requests from the OSCE and other observers. With the exception of the one district for which comprehensive results were released, the CEC did not issue by year's end the order of finish or final totals for Majilis candidates who neither won nor qualified for a run-off.

In response to international and domestic criticism of the exclusion of candidates from the January presidential election, the Government in June removed attendance at a meeting of an unregistered organization from the list of administrative offenses. However, more than 40 other administrative offenses that potentially could disqualify candidates for public office remained on the books. Among these offenses were participation in unsanctioned demonstrations or rallies, an offense that the Government often has used to charge its opponents (see Section 2.b.). The Government presented rescission of the administrative offense as a measure to enable the five opposition leaders convicted of participating in the For Fair Elections meeting to run for Parliament. Two of the five successfully registered as candidates. However, the CEC declined to register Akezhan Kazhegeldin due to a December 1998 administrative conviction for contempt of court. The conviction arose from Kazhegeldin's failure to respond in person to the For Fair Elections charge. (Kazhegeldin argued at the time that he met the law's requirements by sending his attorney.) The chairperson of the CEC publicly encouraged Kazhegeldin to seek the overturn of his contempt of court conviction 1 week before the registration deadline for the parliamentary elections. A successful appeal by Kazhegeldin would have made him eligible, according to the CEC, to run in the parliamentary election. Kazhegeldin subsequently wrote to the Supreme Court requesting that it overturn his contempt conviction, but the Court ruled that his letter did not constitute a proper legal appeal.

Within a day of the CEC exclusion of Kazhegeldin's candidacy, Russian authorities detained Kazhegeldin in Moscow at the request of the Prosecutor General of Kazakhstan. The Government requested extradition of Kazhegeldin, who was living in exile, in connection with allegations that he had laundered illicit funds received while serving as Prime Minister from 1994-97. The investigation of Kazhegeldin, while possibly grounded in facts, appeared motivated politically. Following protests from international human rights groups, the Prosecutor General dropped his extradition request, and the Russian authorities released Kazhegeldin.

The CEC barred the parliamentary candidacy of Madel Ismailov because of his February 1998 criminal conviction for insulting the President (see Section 1.e.). Ismailov had sought to register as a candidate on the RNPK party list. The election law precludes candidates convicted of criminal offenses from running for office for 3 years following their convictions.

A flawed provision in the electoral law was used to disqualify another RNPK candidate, deputy party chairman Gaziz Aldamzharov, after he apparently received a majority of votes in an election in Atyrau. The CEC annulled the second round of the Atyrau election, as well as two other second-round elections, but gave no specific official reason. The electoral law precludes all candidates who participated in an invalidated election from running in a make-up election, regardless of who was responsible for the violations that led to invalidating the election. The CEC interpreted this provision to exclude from the 3 rerun elections all of the approximately 500 candidates who ran unsuccessfully for any Majilis seat in October. Although the CEC did not announce the specific reason for invalidating the Atyrau election, the CEC chairperson said in a television interview that district and precinct electoral officials in Atyrau refused to certify protocols after a series of disturbances that the chairperson attributed to the "opposition." These disturbances included alleged bomb threats, alleged falsification of ballots, and the incursion into one polling station of four masked men who opened and overturned ballot boxes. Given widespread expectations that Aldamzharov would receive a majority of votes in Atyrau, unsubstantiated CEC allegations that the "opposition" disrupted voting in Atyrau appeared contrived.

There were widespread, documented allegations that regional and local executive authorities (akims) interfered with the parliamentary elections during the campaign and in the voting process. In one case, the chief election commissioner for the Ili district (Almaty oblast) resigned because, he alleged, the district akim ordered him to deliver a victory for the akim's favored candidate. The commissioner, like most election officials a government employee, offered to resign from his full-time government job in addition to his electoral responsibilities. A significant number of complaints filed in several regions indicated that akimats and, through them, other employers threatened supporters of opposition candidates with job loss. In one such case, the akimat of the capital city, Astana, allegedly threatened to fire more than 20 government employees for their support of a nonfavored candidate. There were also reports that tax inspectors and the KNB intimidated opposition candidates, their supporters, and the independent media. Akimats used government personnel and other resources, including office space, to campaign for "favored" candidates and to distribute campaign literature for the propresidential Otan party. On first- and second-round voting days, international and domestic observers found akimat representatives "supervising" the work of putatively independent precinct electoral commissions in numerous locations throughout the country.

The failure of the CEC to release most precinct- and district-level vote tallies undermined the credibility of election results. Evidence of official vote tampering in several districts exacerbated this problem. The OSCE observation mission obtained copies of flagrantly falsified protocols (reports of official results). OSCE observers found multiple vote protocols prepared in one Almaty polling station. OSCE and domestic observers reported that precinct officials frequently did not use official protocol forms to record results in the presence of observers or filled out the official forms in pencil. District election officials, especially in first round elections, generally refused to allow observers to witness the tabulation of results from various polling stations. Observers' access to district vote tabulations improved in the second round of voting after the CEC issued new instructions for preparing protocols and instructed district officials to cooperate with observers. Nevertheless, the district election commission in Atyrau refused initially to allow OSCE observers into the district commission office. District officials ultimately allowed the observers into their office but subsequently recommended that they leave because the commission "could not assure the (observers') safety."

The Constitution significantly constrains the independence of the judiciary. A Constitutional Council replaced the Constitutional Court in August 1995 when the new Constitution was adopted. The President appoints three of its seven members, including the chairman. A two-thirds majority of the Council is required to overrule a presidential veto. All judges are appointed directly by the President.

According to the Constitution, the President selects governors of oblasts (the "akims"), based on the recommendation of the Prime Minister; they serve at the discretion of the President, who may annul their decisions.

All adult citizens (at least 18 years of age) have the right to vote. Membership in political parties or trade unions is forbidden to members of the armed forces, employees of national security and law enforcement organizations, and judges.

There are no legal restrictions on the participation of women and minorities in politics, but the persistence of traditional attitudes means that few women hold high office or play active parts in political life, and in general, women are underrepresented severely in government. At the end of the year, no women held ministerial portfolios, though one had ministerial rank and several deputy ministers were women. There were no female provincial governors (akims). Of 39 Senate members, 5 are women; of 77 Majilis members, 8 are women.

Although minority ethnic groups are represented in the Government, Kazakhs hold the majority of leadership positions. Nearly half the population are non-Kazakhs according to the national census completed this year. Non-Kazakhs hold 1 of 3 positions as vice premier and head 2 of 14 government ministries. Non-Kazakhs also are underrepresented in the Majilis and the Senate. In the new Parliament, 8 of 47 current members of the Senate are non-Kazakhs, and 20 of 77 members of the Majilis are non-Kazakhs.

more...

Section 4 Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights

Section 5 Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Religion, Disability, Language, or Social Status

Section 6 Worker Rights