ALMA ATA. (RIA Novosti political commentator Dmitry Kosyrev.) The most debated issue in Kazakhstan today is not the outcome of the December 4 presidential election or how many votes President Nursultan Nazarbayev has won, but whether he will be able to launch the long-awaited reforms known only to a narrow group of his team.
Sabit Zhusupov is director of the Kazakh Institute of Socio-Economic Information and Forecasting and the most respected social scientist in the republic, including in the opposition and the ruling elite. He said the people, 75% of whom want change, voted for Nazarbayev because they, unlike the conservative administration and business elite, regard him as the symbol of change.
Eighty percent of business in the republic is directly or indirectly connected to the government, Zhusupov said. This is an unavoidable stage in the development of an independent nation that had no market relations before. The same pattern was followed by all East and Southeast Asian countries - Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia - which Kazakhstan had copied to perform an economic miracle. But later the government started to gradually abandon the corporate methods of managing the state.
The key question in this departure from the old policy is whether the president and his team will be able to convince the political and economic elites, which have only started to enjoy the fruits of success, to keep moving forward. This would be typical of Nazarbayev, who had forced officials to move to a new capital, Astana, in northern Kazakhstan during a snowstorm in December 1996. At that time, the city had only two hotels and three cafes. The bold experiment proved a brilliant success that spurred the country's economy.
The forthcoming reforms, like the change of the capital, will be a forced decision. A growth of 9% a year, as in Kazakhstan, invariably provokes problems. Zhusupov said that economic progress had encouraged farmers to move to the cities, and the government was not ready to deal with this process. This created pockets of social discontent in the countryside, where the Kazakhs make up nearly 100% of the population, and in city suburbs, where the farmers have been relocating. The government cannot disregard this danger.
Sources close to President Nazarbayev say that a new stage of reforms designed to modernize the management of the country's economic development will be announced on December 9. It is difficult to say what Kazakhstan may become by the end of Nazarbayev's current (and probably last) seven-year term, as it has already grown into something few of its neighbors expected.
By yearend results, it will outpace Russia in per capita GDP (forecast at $3,400) and foreign investment (Kazakhstan has already accumulated over $30 billion).
We "are not trying to give broad coverage to this issue," said Kazakhstan's Foreign Minister Kasymzhumart Tokayev. And he is right, as it would be undiplomatic to rejoice too loudly or make victory over Russia an issue of a propaganda campaign. After all, this is not football.
Russian politicians are coming to realize that the Russo-Ukrainian tandem is no longer the leading team in the post-Soviet territories. Pushed back into uncertainty by the "orange revolution," Ukraine has ceded political and economic leadership to Kazakhstan. This was to be expected, as Russia has also ceded leadership to it in many spheres. Russia's link with Kazakhstan will now be crucial for the zone of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). This also means that Uzbekistan has lost its leading positions in Central Asia, which will change the common perception of the CIS, the post-Soviet space, etc.
For years Nazarbayev has been trying to turn Kazakhstan into the kingpin of Eurasia, "an economic and cultural link between three rapidly developing areas - China, Russia and the Muslim world." Kazakhstan is a model Eurasian country, and not only because Muslims (mostly Kazakhs) make up 57% and Christians (mostly Russians) 40% of its population.
Oil and gas have propelled Kazakhstan into the group of world's top five countries for these resources. The formula of its integration into the system of international economic relations is complicated and comprises the key oil and gas role of America, Russia and China, the priority standing of Russia and Europe in other sectors, a special role played by Turkey, and a growing interest of India.
Another important factor is that there is no aggressive radical Islam in the country, which makes Kazakhstan one of the most promising regional powers of the future - if the changes to be announced on December 9 proceed as smoothly as the reforms before the election.
