An autocrat tries something new for central Asia—organising a transition in his lifetime
!” cried a pie-seller in national dress as voters left a polling station in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s financial capital. A short stroll away in a leafy park, police were ruining the festive mood. Masked officers carried away prostrate protesters and hurled them into police vans. They were breaking up a peaceful demonstration by a few hundred dissenters who had gathered to demand change, even as the man on the verge of being elected president promised continuity.
The rubber-stamping of Mr Tokayev is part of an experiment that Mr Nazarbayev has dreamt up for his country, untested elsewhere in the post-Soviet world. In an apparent effort to secure his legacy, he has handed over power to a chosen successor while still alive. Some speculate that Mr Tokayev is merely a seat-warmer for Mr Nazarbayev’s daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, who presides over the Senate.
But it is at home that Mr Tokayev will face his greatest challenges. Mr Nazarbayev’s resignation has spurred some of Kazakhstan’s 18m citizens—especially people under 29, who have only ever known Mr Nazarbayev as leader and are now over half the population—to challenge the regime’s zero-tolerance attitude towards dissent.
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