Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has handed his long-ruling predecessor significant control over key appointments, a state website said Monday, amid rumours of tensions in the Central Asian country's leadership. Tokayev, 66, became president after the shock resignation in March of Nursultan Nazarbayev, 79, who spent three decades in power and is still viewed as Kazakhstan's top decision-maker.
An October 9 presidential order published on the state website of official legal acts, says the president should consult Nazarbayev before appointing heads of state organs and ministers except those holding the foreign, interior and defence portfolios. The powerful Committee for National Security (KNB), a successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is among the agencies whose head can now only be appointed with consent from Nazarbayev. Tokayev's presidential website had not reposted the presidential order on Monday afternoon.
Nazarbayev is chairman of both the national security council and the ruling party that nominated Tokayev to run in weakly contested presidential elections in June. Foreign-based opposition figure Mukhtar Ablyazov, a long-term foe of Nazarbayev, has dismissed Tokayev, a career diplomat and loyalist, as "furniture." Ablyazov has speculated Tokayev would be moved aside to allow Nazarbayev's 56-year-old daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva to become president during his lifetime.
But Tokayev said he would not be a "transit passenger" after his victory and has recently styled himself as a moderate reformer, calling for a relaxation of laws governing public protests and railing against top-level corruption. Nazarbayev has increased his public appearances in recent times and blamed regime opponents for stirring up "gossip" about disagreements with Tokayev in an interview on Kazakh state television this month.
Yet he also said during the interview that he would not remain silent if the government took a turn he did not agree with. Kazakhstan, an oil-rich country of 18 million is the economic leader among the five ex-Soviet Central Asian states where China and Russia enjoy privileged interests. It maintains a strongly authoritarian political system.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019
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