An autocrat tries something new for central Asia—organising a transition in his lifetime
“HAPPY HOLIDAY!” a pie seller in Kazakh national dress told voters leaving a polling station in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s financial capital. A short stroll away in a leafy park, police were ruining the festive mood. Masked security forces 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 who was certain to be elected president promised them continuity.
The apparent rubber-stamping of Mr Tokayev in this choreographed election is part of an experiment that Mr Nazarbayev has dreamt up for his country, untested elsewhere in the post-Soviet world. He seems to be attempting to install a chosen successor while still alive to secure his legacy, although some speculate that Mr Tokayev is just a seat-warmer in an even more elaborate scheme.
But it is at home that Mr Tokayev will face his greatest challenges. Mr Nazarbayev’s resignation has galvanised some of Kazakhstan’s 18m citizens—especially people under 29, who have only ever known Mr Nazarbayev as leader and now make up over half the population—to challenge the regime’s zero-tolerance attitude towards dissent.
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