The Life and Death of New Political Parties in Kazakhstan

Читайте этот материал на русском. In the wake of Qandy Qantar, a series of violently suppressed urban riots in January 2022, Kazakhstan’s authorities announced the liberalization of the country’s legislation on registering political parties, a move seen at the time as a gesture towards democratization.Authorities, for example, lowered the minimum number of members required for a party to gain official recognition, allowing would-be politicians to register over a dozen new political entities, with hopes of competing in later elections.Parties that appeared to represent the opposition, however, met a great many obstacles.Some applicants were denied on the grounds of having deceased persons and minors in their party lists, while many more saw their founders have criminal cases opened against them, or simply gave up.As a result, only three, clearly pro-government parties managed to successfully register after the ‘Bloody January’ of 2022, meaning that Kazakhstan is thus going into parliamentary elections on August 23 without a single opposition party.What follows is the story of how some of Kazakhstan’s would-be political parties were taken off the scene.Arrested DevelopmentNamys Today, Sanzhar Bokayev, a former civil servant who became a popular social media star after posting a campaign against the increasing of car registration fees, is the latest politician to have ended up facing criminal prosecution after trying to create a political party.In 2022, he announced the creation of Namys (from Kazakh, “Honor”), a digital-first party focusing on a platform of anti-corruption and law enforcement reforms.Namys passed Kazakhstan’s first party-registration hurdle, with the country’s ministry of justice initially approving its membership list, but fell at the second.Under Kazakhstan’s party-registration rules, a founding congress must be attended in person by at least 1,000 delegates.The ministry rejected Namys’s congress on the grounds that only 429 delegates had attended in person, refusing to count those who participated online.Bokayev disputed the interpretation, arguing that assembling 1,000 delegates would cost at least 100 million tenge ($220,000 at the time). “No independent force can do this through its own resources.This can only be done by the authorities or oligarchs,” he said at the time.Sanzhar Bokayev.Photo by Almas Kaisar.In the end, however, Namys never achieved registration.In 2023, Bokayev ran for a parliamentary seat from Almaty as an independent, placing second according to official results.He challenged the results, presenting data from over 100 polling stations that he argued proved he was actually in the lead, though his appeals were ultimately unsuccessful.Following this defeat, Bokayev ventured into urban activism.Primarily filming videos about development violations in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, his posts often went viral and forced local officials to respond.Late last year, however, Bokayev stepped back from civic advocacy, before announcing this year that he was in the United States pursuing business opportunities, and had ceased his public activities.In March, Bokayev was detained upon returning to Almaty from the US after being accused of “deliberately spreading false information” by posting videos of illegal deforestation that prosecutors say were fabricated.The National Security Committee, Kazakhstan’s state security agency, has held him in pre-trial detention since spring.Alga, Kazakhstan!