On July 10, 2021, Kossym-Jomart Tokayev chaired an extended meeting of the government during which the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan demonstrated that the Kazakh state functioning in the manual control mode had de-facto suffered new defeats in combatting its numerous problems.
According to Akorda’s press-release, the meeting included “Prime Minister Askar Mamin, Head of the Presidential Administration Erlan Koshanov, members of the Government, regional-level akims, the akims of Nur-Sultan, Almaty and Shymkent, the heads of the central government bodies and national companies”.
The meeting was held in “the video-conference format” which, given the Kazakh realia, is rather a negative than a positive since such format does not allow the superiors to exert emotional/psychological pressure on the subordinates in order to stimulate the latter to work more ardently.
Those who wish to know what Nursultan Nazarbayev’s successor as the head of the state has said, on what occasions he pretended to slam the table and which orders he’s given to the subordinates, may follow this link (text available in Russian and Kazakh).
As for us, we would call this meeting nothing but an imitation of frenzied activity. And even the dismissal of Minister of Agriculture Saparkhan Omarov did not redeem the situation.
Granted, Mr. Omarov is no angel, but he is certainly not responsible for the fact that the natural/climatic agricultural environment is changing. As well as he is not responsible for the fact that, over the course of the thirty years of Kazakhstan’s sovereignty and independence, the country’s agricultural industry has not managed to find its own way to develop and to fully adapt to the free market conditions.
In view of this, we see no point in examining the problems mentioned in Kossym-Jomart Tokayev’s address and his directions on how to overcome and solve them. This would be pointless since the Kazakh authoritarian political system and the “super-presidential” vertical are continuing to follow the same path as before, when the country was living under the actual leadership of the “leader of the nation”.
At the same time, everything that Nazarbayev’s successor promises, says and does is nothing but propaganda tricks that, at best, may deceive those foreign observes who have no idea what is going on in Kazakhstan.
Therefore, we will limit our examination to registering this – yet again, Kossym-Jomart Tokayev is repeating the mistake that, for Kazakhstan, has become the norm. He is increasing the latter’s presence in the economy. In order to see that, one must not travel too far afield. Critically scrutinising the text of Tokayev’s latest address at the extended meeting of the government should be enough.
For instance, speaking about the issue that concerns every single Kazakh citizen without exception – the coronavirus pandemic – he says that “perhaps we will have to centralise the procurement of medical equipment on the model of procuring pharmaceutical products”.
He justifies this by saying that “the abundance of the bureaucratic procedures oftentimes does not allow to provide healthcare organisations with the necessary equipment in a timely manner. At the same time, inspecting and registering healthcare products is often tied to high corruption risks” and that “the unreasonably high range of the equipment prices also contributes to the low supply level”.
Speaking about another issue that is just as sensitive and all-encompassing, namely, the continuing growth of the consumer goods prices and tariffs, Kossym-Jomart Tokayev says the following -
“The seasonality of the supply as follows from this very word or term. We should solve this problem as part of a larger picture. The government, together with the akims, is to work out a plan for constructing and modernising the vegetable storehouses. Allocate some funds from our numerous support programs specifically for this purpose”.
In other words, he, yet again, has requested his subordinates to take the steps that are bound to lead to increasing the role of the state in the aforementioned sector of the national economy.
Moreover, again, the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan has requested the government to combat the problem that defeated the Soviet Union with its quasi-authoritarian (during its latest years) political system. Here is what he said.
“As I have already pointed out, the redundant and non-transparent agents constitute a major problem. Fair intermediary is an integral and indispensable part of the market economy. Fair intermediary, I repeat. However, it is unacceptable when the agents adapt the market to their own needs, receive surplus profits at the expense of producers and consumers. Oftentimes, they employ rather seamless schemes that local authorities seem to be unable to trace”.
All is all, in his address of July 10, 2021, presented at the extended meeting of the government, Kossym-Jomart Tokayev said nothing new that may be of vital importance to the citizens, the society and the state apparatus. And, in our opinion, he will say nothing of the sort either today or tomorrow. Due to that simple reason that he is not a reformer (much less a revolutionary) but a performer of a given function.
When he was appointed the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When Nursultan Nazarbayev appointed him the head of the Senate, he headed the Senate. When the First President appointed him his successor as the head of the state, he began heading the state.
Therefore, Kazakhstan and its citizens will have to continue travelling down the road designed by Tokayev’s predecessor.
And we are not to predict for how long.
