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18 November 2005
Fair Election Could Make Kazakhstan a "Leader" in Central Asia
State's Bryza discusses presidential elections, political reform
Washington -- Kazakhstan has the opportunity to lead Central Asia into a prosperous future if its December 4 elections are conducted with the freedom and fairness promised by President Nursultan Nazarbayev, a U.S. diplomat says.
The U.S. goal is for a successful election “that would enable Kazakhstan to be a locomotive of positive development throughout the whole region,” Matthew Bryza, deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, said November 17.
The elections offer the opportunity for Kazakhstan “to raise itself to an unprecedented level as a real leader in Central Asia, not only in the hard-core security and economic concerns of the realpolitik world, but also on the issue of shared values that can expand political freedom,” Bryza said. He was one of four panelists who discussed the upcoming elections at a Hudson Institute conference in Washington.
Nazarbayev is widely expected to win December’s election, conference participants said. He already has served two seven-year presidential terms and appears to be popular with a majority of Kazakstan’s 15 million citizens. Panelists at the Hudson Institute conference said the only unknown factor was whether the voting results would give him a 70 percent margin of victory instead of an unrealistic margin of 80 percent or more, due in part to local officials who – following a Soviet-era mindset – might seek to make sure their precincts appear to staunchly support the nation’s leader.
When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Astana, Kazakhstan, in October, Nazarbayev said he was committed to promoting democracy. A day before Rice’s arrival, the country’s Central Election Commission announced a commitment to measures that would make the voting freer and fairer, Bryza said. (See related article.)
“It’s impossible for any country to flip the switch one day or in one election and suddenly have an ideal democratic political environment,” Bryza said. “That’s just not how human nature works. What matters is that countries are moving decisively, constantly – but at the pace that is reflective of reality – toward democratic institutions.”
U.S. STRATEGIC INTERESTS IN CENTRAL ASIA
The United States has three strategic interests in Central Asia, he said: energy, security and expanding freedom through reform.
Its vast oil and gas deposits first attracted the United States to the region more than a decade ago when the Central Asian republics declared their independence from the Soviet Union. The Kashagan oilfield, off Kazakhstan’s Caspian Sea coast, is the largest worldwide oil discovery since Alaska’s North Slope, Bryza said, and production is expected to begin well before the end of the decade.
“I don’t think we should be ashamed to talk about that,” he said. “In the beginning, why Central Asia really occupied a major geostrategic space on the map was because of energy, Caspian energy.”
However, the United States also has strong security interests in the region, Byrza said. “We have an amazing legacy and current cooperation with Kazakhstan on nonproliferation,” he said.
Kazakhstan also was the first country in the region to offer landing rights after the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 -- “so the record of cooperation with Kazakhstan on security matters is really quite strong,” Bryza said.
Finally, he said, President Bush has made the expansion of freedom and reforms “a primary interest” of the United States.
“Without economic reform, which has been a success story in Kazakhstan, you can’t really, over the long run, attract the energy investments; you can’t use the energy revenues in a way that fosters balanced economic growth, a sense of justice and therefore a sense of stability in a society,” Bryza said.
“Similarly, you have to have some advancement of political freedom. We believe there is no stability in any country if there isn’t political legitimacy. And there’s only one way to develop political legitimacy in this day and age, and that’s through democracy, through elections that are free and fair.”
DEMOCRACY AND TRADITION
Bryza noted that Bush, in his second inaugural address, said that democracy would vary from country to country, depending on its own traditions and culture.
For that reason, Bryza said, Central Asia has a particular importance in the world because of its traditions of the coexistence of religious faiths, as well as being the birthplace of “cosmopolitan, tolerant doctrines of Islam that came to be known as classical Islam.”
He cited “traditions that are indigenous to Central Asia that embrace jihad not as a violent external struggle to kill infidels, but as an internal effort to better oneself as a spiritual struggle. Those are wonderful traditions. They are a natural shield against the extremism imported from abroad, and we should do all we can to help resurrect those and help the people of Central Asia embrace their own culture.”
For additional information on U.S. policy in the region, see Central Asia-Caucasus.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
