KAZAKHSTAN

By Julie Moffett

Washington, Jan 28

(RFE/RL)

A member of a newly formed political party called the Republican National Party of Kazakhstan (RNPK) says real power rests with the Kazakh people and not the president.

Assylbek Kozhakhmetov made the comment Tuesday at a press conference in Washington to discuss the party�s formation and attract international recognition to their political platform.

Kozhakhmetov is the rector of the Almaty School of Business and also the new secretary of the RNPK�s Executive Committee for Organization. He is heading an 11-person delegation that is in Washington this week on a five-day visit sponsored by the Kazakhstan 21st Century Foundation � a Swiss-based, non-profit, independent organization focusing on the development of democratic values and a market economy in Kazakhstan.

Kozhakhmetov said the delegation came to Washington to meet with U.S. officials and numerous non-governmental organizations in an attempt to gain international support for the party. The delegation has met with several officials at the U.S. State Department and made contacts with several congressional aides, he said. He added that the delegation has also held meetings with various non-governmental organizations, including the American Foreign Policy Council, the Carnegie Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy.

Kozhakhmetov said the new party was formed in order to counter the dominant power held by Kazakhstan�s President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

�I believe that when the power of the executive, judiciary and legislative branches find themselves in the hands of just one individual, we are fully in a position to consider that a textbook definition of tyranny.�

Kozhakhmetov said that his party finds it distressing that not a single branch of the Kazakh government is independent of presidential control. He particularly criticized President Nazarbayev�s practice of appointing members to the national parliament. He also said corruption, cronyism, censorship and communist-style economic and political policies by the Nazarbayev administration are destroying the very fabric of Kazakhstan�s society and economy, and are leading to a complete exhaustion of the nation�s human and natural resources.

Kazakh officials gave no immediate response to RFE/RL�s Washington correspondent seeking a reaction to the charges leveled by the delegation. Our correspondent called the Kazakh Embassy in Washington, but officials there said they had no one available for comment.

But at the press conference, Kozhakhmetov said his party, which was founded in Kazakhstan about 40 days ago, intends to aggressively promote the establishment of democratic institutions and a free market economy in Kazakhstan.

According to the text of RNPK platform, which was handed out to reporters, it is stated: �This is a party meant to encompass the whole nation, whose goal is to transform the political system through active participation in parliamentary elections and elections of all other central or local political bodies in order to ensure the basic interests of all Kazakhstan�s citizens.... to improve people�s lives through political and economic change.�

The platform further states that the party is �ready to become a training ground for the political elite,� adding: �We believe that the power should rest in the hands of the leaders of our generation. The old generation of leaders is unable to cope with the quickly changing situation. As a result, our country is losing everything it achieved during the last decades.�

Kozhakhmetov told reporters that the party already has more than 4,000 members from all 14 regions of Kazakhstan and is actively recruiting more members. He said the party was founded by members of the popular movement �For a Fair and Just Election� which was created last year to promote a free and fair presidential election in Kazakhstan.

Kozhakhmetov said the RNPK has three main strategic goals:

� Obtain registration as a political party from the Ministry of Justice.

� Build up support for the party and increase membership across Kazakhstan.

� Become actively involved in the two forthcoming elections � to the national parliament and the municipal-level governments.

He said the party�s biggest concern is that the Kazakh Ministry of Justice will refuse to register them as a political party.

�If we are not able to obtain registration, which is a real possibility, most likely the same things will be happening to us as what happened to those who founded �For a Fair and Just Election.� That means we will be subject to all kinds of harassment, including arrests and administrative action.�

The Editor's column

There are soft chairs and there are rigid ones

There are else such chairs � nails out. You are already so comfortable in it, and then � phut � they tore it away from beneath you � together with the nails.

You, wait, you are going to talk about procedural matters? Wait, you, stop piling it on and on, let me�

Mikhail Gorbachev

(quoted by Mikhail Zadornov, 1990)

Last week I bought a video tape with old records of Mikhail Zadornov. There is a travesty from Gorbachev. It is the year 1990, the vast hall is stowed, everybody is looking at Zadornov, while the latter is discoursing in the Gorbachev�s manner:

- Well, I see, you agree with me, this is essential;

- Well, I understand you reaction;

Or, you must remember it:

- Switch the microphone 3 off!

The hall is howling with laughter, so many faces (you know this phrase � �the good Scottish face�)� I suddenly got horrified. Nine years after, in 1999, I am sitting at the TV set with the remote control in hand and I am horrified � such is my first reaction.

Why?

Those viewers listening to Zadornov in 1990 still have all this ahead: when they do not know what to do, when they do not know what will happen tomorrow, when they muse �the whole life is down the drain and no one needs what I can do�. That very soon for these viewers there would come the time when� Well, this time has come yet. Well, just picture to yourself: you are sitting on a chair and that chair is abruptly torn away from under you. You are still listening and laughing, living in the same old way, while I see from outside � there is no chair, people are tumbling, tumbling�

Now, nine years later, I feel horrified; I know that the floor they are tumbling on is so spit-over, sunflower seeds husks, it�s wet, it�s dirty�

Some people will rebound and jump to his feet quickly � well, these are Komsomols, they will slosh along on life. A majority of them will fall repeatedly, and there will be ones who will take off and fly � OK, we are not talking about these ones. The other will pound along. There will be ones who will get up and pound along very heavily. Other people will dartle and beat about. A few will not be able to get up. Some peaple will break a leg, an arm, the backbone�

Young people and old people, educated people and not so much educated people, men and women � how many are they there, in the TV set, in that old video record listening to Makhail Zadornov openly deriding Gorbachev: �More socialism. Faithful leninist. Turn the economy face to people�. Now I know exactly face to what the economy had been standing to us. Again, I am horrified. It is 1990 and Gorbachev is still the President. But it is still visible � how could we be so blind � he is illiterate. What? Moscow University? Law Department? Do I not know the kind of studies they had there. Like their Party predecessors who had been spending most of their time in prisons they were spending their time at meetings and in collective farms. They hopscotch, they always celebrate something and they hold something, and then it is always- CAREER. I am watching that record � 1990 travesty � people are laughing and I am horrified.

Yesterday I was sitting at table with a Britisher. He has been living in Almaty about four years. He says: �Look, how everything is being changed. Formerly, the booths were not seen. Now, look at them - at every corner. Plus the shops�� Here is the landscape kind of changing. But we know here these changes have really taken place (I was going to say �inside us�) Or else, it has not happened and everything is limited to the booths?. A Kazakstani sociologist said while talking to me: �So, what�s changed? The authorities are in, the people�s mentality is where it was � everything is still discussed in kitchens, that is they will obey as they have obeyed�. To that I replied�

Well, that�s all � standing order.

N. A.

ALMATY, Jan 27

(AFP)

The Kazakhstan government plans to start on Wednesday pushing a package of crisis measures through parliament to shore up the currency and economy.

New Kazakh Finance Minister Uraz Djandosov told AFP that the government would present revisions to the 1999 budget as the first of a package of measures designed to lessen the impact of the crises in Asia and Russia on the Kazakh economy.

�Part of the measures will be in the budget and the other part will be introduced in parliament by the prime minister in the course of a month,� Djandosov said, adding that the �key task� would be to improve a deteriorating trade balance.

This vast, resource-rich Central Asian country of nearly 16 million people has been hard hit by the lowest world prices for decades for its most important export commodities � oil and metals � and by financial crises in Russia, its most important trading partner, and in Southeast Asia.

The world crisis hit just when Kazakhstan�s output had been expected to grow by 3 percent in 1998. Now the country is forecasting a fall in output in 1999 of 1.5 percent, while exports are expected to decline by about 10 percent, Djandosov said.

Kazakhstan has already taken one step to improve its trade balance, introducing a ban on cheap Russian foodstuffs which have flooded across the border since Russia devalued its currency last August.

Kazakhstan hopes to keep Russian imports at early 1998 levels and plans to introduce measures to support domestic producers, Djandosov said.

�If the balance of payments improves, a big devaluation of the tenge (national currency) will not be needed,� he said.

Officials fear a sharp fall would erode what public trust remains in Kazakhstan�s economy after its collapse following the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Djandosov said.

�The public�s trust in the economy is very slowly being restored and we don�t want to lose that,� he said.

But there are others who think devaluating the tenge may benefit Kazakhstan�s economy, mainly by attracting foreign investment at a time when much outside financing, such as Eurobonds, has proven difficult to obtain and investor interest in emerging markets is waning.

�After devaluation, their sell-offs would be more successful than before because nobody wants to invest in a currency that is expected to fall,� said

Serik Zhukenov, ABN AMRO Bank�s head forex dealer in Kazakhstan.Djandosov is optimistic about foreign investment receipts, which he says the government will revise upward to nearly $600 million in the 1999 budget revision.

Kazakhstan has already received $200 million from the U.S. oil giant Mobil as its 1999 payment for a 25-percent share of the giant Tenghiz oil field and there is interest in the state telecommunications firm, Kaztelekom, he said.

In addition, Kazakhstan is looking to continue previous attempts to sell shares in its �blue chip� metals companies, Djandosov said.

�Therefore, we think that this figure (of privatization income) is realistic enough,� he said.

One Western analyst, who declined to be named, was optimistic that Kazakhstan would receive the expected privatization income in 1999.

Australia Day celebrated in Almaty

By Furio DE MARSANICH

ALMATY, Jan 26

(THE GLOBE)

The 211th anniversary of the newest continent, what today is known as the Commonwealth of Australia, has been gaily celebrated tonight in the beauty of the magnificent Ball Room of the Regent Ankara Hotel in this former capital city.

For once, however, Almaty has shown her diplomatic leading role in Kazakstan by heralding a high participation of diplomats at the Australian embassy reception.

Among the various buffet tables, holding all kinds of hot�n�cold delicacies, have been noted many heads of missions such as the British ambassador Mr. Douglas McAdams, ther ambassador of Italy, Dr. Fabrizio Piaggesi and his wife Livia, the Japanese representative, Mr. Hidekata Mitsuashi, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, the ambassador of India, H.E. Rajiv Sikri. Israel too has been represented by Mrs. Vivien Aisen, second secretary of her embassy, accompanied by her husband Alex Wettstein, an esteemed consultant in town. Mrs. Michael Humphreys, wife of the ambassador of the Delegation of the European Union, has well represented the Commission in lieu of her husband.

Of course H.E. Peter Tesch, the hosting ambassador, aided by some of his embassy staff and senior officers, among whom Mrs. Margaret Newman, first secretary and consul, has greeted the over 200 guests at the entrance of the huge Ball Room of the hotel at 6 P.M. sharp.

Many members of Almaty�s business world have shared their congratulations with the ambassador and the small but vital Australian community of this city: bankers, financial analysts, oilmen, enterpreneurs. Among them Werner F. Gumz, Lufthansa�s general manager for Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan, Mr. Charles D. Rice of PricewaterhouseCoopers, president as well of Almaty�s International Business Chamber of Kazakhstan, Mr. Silvio A. Ippoliti, resident representative of the Renco Group, Agip�s Mr. Fabrizio Duranti, Mr. Brampton Mundy, head of the newly opened Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation branch in town, and Mr. Michiel de Bruijn, deputy general manager of the local ABN � Amro Bank branch.