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THE NATIONAL QUESTION IN THE PLATFORMS OF POLITICAL PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS IN KAZAKHSTANValentina KURGANSKAIA
Murat SABIT
Valentina Kurganskaia, Ph.D. (Philos.), associate professor, director of the Humanitarian Research Center (Almaty, Kazakhstan).
Murat Sabit, D.Sc. (Philos.), professor, head of the Philosophy and History Department at Kazakhstan State Architectural Design Academy (Almaty, Kazakhstan).
The Building of a Multi-Party System and the Formation of Public Movements in KazakhstanSince gaining its sovereignty, Kazakhstan has put its efforts into building a political system and civilian society, which has led to the development of a multi-party system. Its political parties are guided in their activity by the Law on Political Parties adopted in July 1996. However, the current system is distinguished by the fact that the political parties do not have a broad social base, their platforms do not sufficiently represent the interests of the real social population groups, there is inadequate party influence on public opinion, the parties themselves are small with few active supporters, their organizational, financial (with the rare exception) and ideological foundations are underdeveloped, the power elite controls their activity, state structures interfere directly or indirectly in party formation, the parties’ activity revolves around the personality of their leaders, and the parties and public movements are divided not only according to their loyalty or opposition to the authorities, but also according to whether they are ethnically oriented or are multi-ethnic in nature.
Kazakhstan’s political parties and public movements have not yet developed into an influential political force and vital element in the formation of a civilian society. According to sociological surveys, political parties are at the bottom of the list of social institutions which Kazakhstanians feel have real levers of power (the president rides the top of this list, followed by the mafia, government, parliament, national security committee, maslikhat, akims, the army, and the clergy).
Frankly, this can only be expected in a country which has no democratic traditions of party formation. Whereas in developed capitalist countries, where the multi-party system has formed without hitches, parties have correctly understood and taken account of local interests, subsequently transferring them to the epicenter of the political struggle—congress and parliament, parties in Kazakhstan have formed amid tempestuous economic and political changes, which have only served to fracture social integrity. Nevertheless, the role of parties as a vital part of political life is growing in the country. We can predict in no uncertain terms that this process will continue, whether the state-political system develops along authoritarian and ethnocratic lines, or whether it becomes truly democratic and liberalized.
The formation and development of Kazakhstan’s political party system can be divided into four main stages:
The first stage hails the appearance of politicized public club-like formations (mainly youth). This stage lasted from the autumn of 1986 to February 1989. The first independent sociopolitical movements arose, usually in the form of opposition structures to the communist party and totalitarian regime as a whole. National-political movements appeared in 1989, the student association Forum in May, and the informal movement Zheltoksan (a union of the participants in the December events of 1986 in Almaty) in July.
The second stage is associated with the formation of national unions. The first of them, the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement, arose in February 1989 on the initiative of O. Suleimenov. Large organizations began to form in May 1990 aimed at reviving and protecting Kazakhstan’s national culture and language, as well as the first national parties and movements, Alash, Zheltoksan, Azat, and Kazachie dvizheniie.
The third stage began in 1991. At that time, the Law on Public Movements in the Kazakh S.S.R. was adopted, and for the first time, in October of that year, the authorities began officially registering parties, public organizations, and movements. In March 1994, elections to the Supreme Soviet were held for the first time on a multi-party basis, and party factions were formed in the parliament. The most influential were the factions of the Kazakhstan National Unity Alliance (KNUA), the Kazakhstan People’s Congress (KPC), and the Kazakhstan Socialist Party (KSP). Political parties and movements gained access to real political power.
The fourth stage began in the autumn of 1999. It is associated with the introduction of a mixed election system to the country’s parliament, which included voting according to party lists.
Parties During the Election RaceAccording to the Law on Elections, which takes into account the recommendations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and other international organizations, registered political parties with republic-wide recognition were permitted to participate in the elections. Unfortunately, there are no exact data on the total number of…………..
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