Nazarbaev’s third modernization’s latest priority has been labeled ‘institutional reforms, security and fight against corruption’. This part of elbasy’s message to the people of Kazakhstan consists mostly of requests to the government and institutions subordinate to the head of the state. Let’s see if they have a chance of being fulfilled.

For example, president has ordered the government to “oversee the work on executing of best practices of the OECD”.  The catch is in the phrasing of this order: he didn’t say, “to execute the best practices”, but rather phrased it as overseeing the work on executing them, which isn’t the same thing.

The same is true of the call to continue reforms “aimed at protecting private property, supremacy of laws and ensuring equality of every citizen before the law. This is because one can be striving for this noble goal until the end of days, without achieving anything.

In contrast to the aforementioned vague orders, Nazarbaev’s demand to “soften administrative and criminal legislation”, so that administrative fines become fair and commensurate to committed violations, is concrete and to the point. We really hope that it will be executed in the near future.

As for the work on “lowering sanctions for violations in the business sphere”, including decriminalizing of economic components of crimes, with low levels of public danger, this directive deserves the most vehement support from society. Its execution, however, will depend on the balance of power in any individual case.

We are sure that the directives to achieve an increase in the trust for the judicial system and to exclude any unlawful influence on the work of judges, will not come to fruition. This is because under conditions of super-presidency, judicial branch is just a small part of presidential top-down command structure, while Eurasian practices show that every duck thinks it’s a swan.

We are not going to analyze elbasy’s directives regarding security, since they are simply words. All we will say is that Akorda has lost the ideological war for the minds of Kazakhstanis. When twenty people gathered for a religious meeting, decide to conduct an armed attack on a military unit and when a man joins such an attack with the sole purpose of killing military men, you know “Rubikon” is over.

At the very end of his January address to the people of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbaev touched on the subject of corruption. Based on his tone, it seems like he himself doesn’t believe in the success of the attempt to fight this phenomenon, otherwise he wouldn’t demand simply “increasing the efforts on uncovering and eradicating the causes of corruption”. As we had stated earlier, you can enforce anything you want and for any length of time, without any noticeable results.

Let’s summarize. As evident from the words of Nazarbaev himself, in his address to the nation, he was trying to convey his vision of the direction of development, to every citizen of the country. In our humble opinion, he failed to do so.

First of all, the document is written in a very archaic form, similar to the one used in analogous documents of the Soviet era.

Secondly, even though the message is formally addressed to the people of Kazakhstan, there’s no direct call to the people with a plea to do anything, to support or to galvanize, so it doesn’t appeal to the emotional side.

Thirdly, the address in no way motivates Kazakh people to take part in the third modernisation of the country, there’s not a trace of effort to find common interests of the government and society.

Fourthly, the work of popularizing the message isconducted in traditional for Kazakhstan bureaucratic method, without using the modern digital method of employing internet and social networks.

Fifthly, the quality of the document itself is low, and it looks as if it was put together in a hassle, using propositions from various institutions and other involved government structures.

Finally, there is no desire to change the country and convince fellow citiziens of participating in these initiatives, contained in the message.