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Kazakhstan president proposes reforms to limit his powers
- m00dy 5y agoand then it will become a sub-state of Russia.
- usrusr 5y agoBecause a would-be Lukashenko would face more checks and balances than without the reforms?
- detaro 5y agowhy would this encourage that?
- yywwbbn 5y agoBecause Russian troops put down a violent revolt just couple few months ago. It’s not unlikely Tokayev would had lost power without the Russian intervention (I won’t pretend I understand what actually happened there, the whole chain of events seemed pretty confusing). It seems everyone had already forgotten that, though.
- NicoJuicy 5y agoNo, we haven't. But things aren't always as simple as they appeared then either.
- jasonvorhe 5y agoThat statement doesn't seem to make sense without context. Please elaborate.
- kome 5y agonot OP, but in general in Central Asia, Russian influence pervades every aspect of life, especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - it feels like living in a Russian province... perhaps this is a bit less tue in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (at least culturally, but still very strong link economically). There is a push of Central Asian people toward a form of de-colonial thinking and praxis, but in my humble opinion, it's another colonization with a different color - from the west.
- NicoJuicy 5y agoThat's not true. What is true is that democracy mostly exists in the west currently. But it's not colonisation if a country becomes a democracy. That could happen without "the west". Ps. A sign of not a democracy is leaders in control for > 20 years.
- Isinlor 5y agoFrom Polish perspective I'm extremely grateful to my parents generation for starting the collapse of the Soviet sphere and very quick and decisive pivot to the west. Especially, when compared to Ukraine. Poland and Ukraine had the same size economy in 1991. Last year Polish economy was 3 times bigger than Ukraine. Personally, I can travel, study and work wherever I want in EU with zero trouble. I was born in Poland, studied in Belgium and Netherlands, work in Belgium and live in Finland. Russia is a terrible partner. Russia sympathizer in Ukraine brought destruction on that country from Russia. It's really tragic that Russia is obliterating people that considered themselves Russians living in Ukraine. There is zero comparison between modern western projects and Russia imperialism that did not change in the last 300 years.
- alexklark 5y agoYou mismatching 70 years of global efforts to destroy communist state that include giving “freedoms” and “foods” to former v4 to the actual freedom. As soon as, for some reason, Poland wont be on trade route with Russia, have no gas and oil from russia, no slave labor from Ukraine, no EU billions of aids for decades, the magic of capitalism became much weaker. An if your “elites” happen to “disagree” with EU on something more than gays and abortions, you will know what is real capitalism. And you have no jews to blame now, so you will blame Russians.
- celticninja 5y agoThey have refused to recognize Crimea and the Donbas as independent entities as requested by Russia. They are definitely moving away from being beholden to Russia.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago>They are definitely moving away from being beholden to Russia. That's one way to you find your post-soviet country attacked by Russia's army in order to "protect Russian minorities there" and "liberate your country from nazis". Though Russia is currently too busy in the west right now to register Kazakhstan on the radar, so now is probably the golden opportunity to break your chains from them if you have any.
- throwaways85989 5y agoI think that this is the reason why many countries will use the spur of the moment. Russia falling apart that publicly with such a weak leadership, that will become a hot summer allover the border regions.
- risyachka 5y agoRussia will think many times over before attacking another country now. Everybody has seen how actually weak their army is. Before that, counties and people were afraid of them mostly because of soviet era fame. Now they've shown they are incapable on anything except missile hits with a great failure rate.
- forum_ghost 5y agobut isn't 1/3rd of a country size of France is under their control now, and ruble trades higher than before sanctions? Russia's performance was certainly underwhelming, especially their logistics and general appearance of disorganization, but weak might also be a bit of a stretch.
- 323 5y ago
- imtringued 5y agoDoes Russia have anything going for it militarily nowadays other than nuclear weapons?
- booblik 5y agoIf true this is truly amazing. So rare nowadays to see countries move towards democracy instead away from it.
- aliraheem 5y agoYup excellent if it pans out - although Kazakhs remain sceptical. But it is quite extraordinary to see parts of the government lead by Tokayev, eject an autocrat (Nazarbayev) and begin the process of democratisation. And it does seem to stem from a lack of willingness to carry out a crackdown on the people. It is not likely to become a liberal democracy soon if ever (not that is needs to be a goal at all). A hybrid regime is very likely though. You love to see it.
- NicoJuicy 5y agoIt seems like it is, but it's not new either. Eg. This was co-ed with their president 11 years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kazakhstans-steady-progress-toward-democracy/2011/03/28/AF1XPKCC_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kazakhstans-steady-p... Many signs that they have good-will for democracy, but I don't think it's easy in their position ( member of the CSTO and in Russia's "sphere of influence"). I have seen signs that they aren't just a puppet of Russia for example and I wasn't sure what was going on. But the article somewhat explained it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Georgelemental 5y agoThat opinion piece is by the old leader Nazarbayev, who Tokayev just muscled out of power.
- NicoJuicy 5y agoThanks, didn't knew that. But the ( natural) direction seems to be set either way.
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- thriftwy 5y agoPost-soviet political systems do not seem to converge on anything stable. In this case a president may plan to become a prime minister and so he needs to limit presidential power - this was seen in Russia, Turkey, etc.
- sekai 5y agoUhh, wrong? Baltics are stable like any western counterpart.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- emteycz 5y agoPutin limited presidential power when exactly?
- thriftwy 5y agoIn 2008.
- albertopv 5y agoIt's a joke, right? Russia is now a de facto dictatorship with the same man in charge since 1999.
- pooper 5y agoiirc Putin swapped and became a prime minister for a short period in between. > As he was then constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms as president, Putin served as prime minister again from 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev, and returned to the presidency in 2012 in an election marred by allegations of fraud and protests; he was reelected again in 2018. In April 2021, following a referendum, he signed into law constitutional amendments including one that would allow him to run for reelection twice more, potentially extending his presidency to 2036. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin
- jdrc 5y agowell, they are less likely to be invaded at the current time
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sto_hristo 5y ago
- bob2222 5y ago
- onenukecourse 5y ago
- tarvaina 5y agoReminds me of my native Finland in the early 1980s after Urho Kekkonen retired from his 25-year presidency. The successor Mauno Kekkonen started a series of constitutional reforms that transferred much of the presidential power to the parliament. The general consensus seems to be that Finland is now much more democratic and less influenced by USSR/Russia. (I don't know anything about Kazakhstan politics so the similarities may be superficial.)
- madaxe_again 5y agoFinland, you had Kekkonen because he was seen as a safe and strong option for standing up to the USSR. Kaz had Nazarbayev for decades because he happened to be the Soviet in charge when the USSR collapsed, and never held a free or fair election. I guess there are similarities in terms of the backdrop against which change comes (the change in threat level presented by the USSR/Russia), but beyond that, I think it superficial. That said, I know little about Finnish politics.
- VictorPath 5y ago> Finland, you had Kekkonen because he was seen as a safe and strong option for standing up to the USSR...That said, I know little about Finnish politics. The last statement is correct. For the most part, Kekkonen did whatever the USSR wanted. He was the architect of Finlandization. The USSR was in a totally different state in 1945 than during the Winter War. It could have rolled into Finland at the end of the Nazi funded Continuation War, reinstated as the government the losing side from among the worker parties of the Finnish Civil War, and Finland would have been another Warsaw Pact Comecon country. But the USSR did not. Because Germany and the buffer states between were seen as a possible threat but Finland was not. Finland had no means of standing up to the USSR, and Kekkonen did the opposite.
- glaze 5y agoHis successor was Mauno Koivisto.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoThey did the same after FDR in the USA to limit presidential term limits. It has become more and more clear that we need the same with more powerful federal positions like speaker of the house, leader of the senate, supreme court, etc. We need new blood every so often. I wish it was across the board but maybe we could start with these top positions and see how it goes. Clearly what we have is not working for the betterment of the general welfare, currently it's only for corporate welfare.
- bob2222 5y ago
- PedroBatista 5y agoThe cynic me thinks his Russian “advisers” told him that’s the correct way. Because the current situation is unsustainable and instead of chaos they can’t deal with right now, they both get to maintain their power and for the FSB dealing with a few more people with less power but more aspirations might be a better deal. At the end of the day they are buying time and what is given by decree can also be taken way by decree either formally or in practical terms. Let’s hope I’m wrong or they really get what they just pretended to want.
- sofixa 5y agoUnlikely considering he refuses to toe the Russian line on Ukraine, doesn't recognise the Russian conquests there, etc.
- sangnoir 5y agoDoes this make a material difference? Hypothetically, if Russia wanted an ally in good books woth the west to help with evading sanctions (or to jist cement Kazakh leadership) - wouldn't they advise Kazakhstan to say exactly this? They'd lose nothing, AFAICS
- richardfey 5y agoThe FSB will not have any budget nor political stability in the next few years to handle anything more than their own internal power struggles, once out of Kazakhstan they'll stay out.
- 323 5y agoProbably related somehow: > Kazakhstan will not help Russia to evade Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, a top Kazakh official has said. > Kazakhstan is not part of this conflict. Yes, we are part of the Eurasian Economic Union but we are an independent state with our own system, and we will abide by the restrictions imposed on Russia and Belarus. We don't want and will not risk being placed in the same basket. > Kazakhstan respects the territorial integrity of Ukraine, did not recognize and will not recognize the Crimean annexation, nor the independence of the two separatist-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y agoWhile this is certainly nice to hear, I fear how we're going to pay for this. The border with Russia is quite long, and we've heard of lot of the same things they said about Ukraine, especially in the past couple of years. We have almost 10× less the population than Russia has, no borders with any of the Western countries, and I doubt they'd care much about us anyway.
- grosswait 5y agoI don’t know where this is going but I love that we have a comment from a native (or at least resident) of Kazakhstan here. All the best, and hope to visit your country some day.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y agoSame reason I spend so much time on the internet. Where else would you get the chance of talking to someone from the other side of the planet? If you ever do visit, please do it in late spring or early autumn. The climate here is a bit extreme, especially for someone from milder ones. (I've always lived here, and you don't pay much attention to -40°C winters and +35°C summers after living with it for a few decades.) It's not that bad all the time, but if you do happen to arrive in the middle of such an event, it's not a fun experience. Nomads were doing the logical thing and moving around with seasons. We, not so much.
- deleted 5y ago
- forinti 5y agoThis recent interview of Sergey Guriev by Varlamov has an interesting analysis of the breakup of the USSR and how each Republic went about its subsequent business. https://youtu.be/JjiK5FzObkg https://youtu.be/JjiK5FzObkg
- gardaani 5y agoA lot of changes in Kazakhstan. They are also changing their alphabet from Cyrillic to Latin-based: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16925646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16925646
- peace4all 5y agoIronically, this reform was started under the previous 30-year president, "father of nation" Nazarbayev in 2018 or '19, and was halted under Tokayev. Some signs in the streets were converted before the reform was finalized, but not all. And now if you deal with e-government website, everything is in Cyrillic. Kazakh UI of the website is still in Cyrillic too. I haven't seen a single Kazakh price tag in Latin yet.
- Tao331 5y ago