II. Political Background

In the four years since Human Rights Watch published its last report on political freedoms in Kazakhstan,[1] the government has shown a disappointing lack of commitment to meaningful improvements in human rights. True, it has undertaken a number of important steps, such as ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 2006 and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture in 2008,[2] issuing a declaration recognizing the competence of the United Nations Committee against Torture to consider individual complaints, signing (but not yet ratifying) the Optional Protocol to the ICCPR,[3] and introducing some limited reform to the criminal justice system.[4] But it has shown no signs of fundamental change in practice. Instead, the government has held elections that fell short of international standards, further tightened control over independent media, interfered with the political opposition (among other things, by refusing to register a major opposition party), launched politically motivated lawsuits against its critics, and adopted a number of laws that restrict civil and political rights.

Upcoming OSCE Chairmanship

As early as 2003, Kazakhstan announced its plans to seek the OSCE chairmanship. Its bid for the chairmanship was controversial because of its poor record of adherence to the OSCE's human rights principles, as a result of which its initial bids from 2005 to 2007, for the 2009 chairmanship, were unsuccessful. Responding to OSCE participating states' concerns about Kazakhstan's renewed (and ultimately successful) bid for the 2010 chairmanship, Foreign Minister Marat Tazhin on November 29, 2007, speaking at the OSCE Ministerial Council in Madrid, pledged that Kazakhstan would take several reform steps prior to assuming the chairmanship. These included amending the media law, reforming the law on elections, and liberalizing the registration requirements for political parties by the end of 2008. Tazhin further pledged that Kazakhstan would incorporate recommendations by the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) in the election legislation, and promised that Kazakhstan's chairmanship would preserve the ODIHR and its existing mandate and refrain from supporting any future efforts to weaken this institution.[5] Minister Tazhin's pledges were unprecedented, for Kazakhstan and the OSCE, and welcome. At the beginning of December the OSCE Ministerial Council approved Kazakhstan's holding the 2010 chairmanship.

On November 11, 2008, the government sent to parliament draft amendments in all legislative areas covered by Minister Tazhin's pledges. As explained below, they would introduce changes that would appear to be more superficial and pro forma than substantial.

Since Kazakhstan was selected for the 2010 OSCE chairmanship the obstacles facing local civil society groups have remained very high. On the one hand, the government has established a number of human rights-related working groups, including one to draft a National Plan on Human Rights 2008-2011. But on the other, the government continues to deflect or even ignore criticism. Local NGOs believe that the government seeks to portray its having been awarded the 2010 OSCE chairmanship as evidence that its human rights record is in good order. Some Kazakh NGOs believe that the upcoming chairmanship makes it all the more important for the OSCE, participating states, and other intergovernmental organizations to use the period leading up to 2010 to press for reforms.[6]

Elections

This report does not examine violations of the right to participate in elections or in public affairs, although two chapters of the present report describe limitations on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly, two important pillars of an open system for free and fair elections. But one of the most serious concerns about the appropriateness of Kazakhstan's chairmanship relates to its failure since independence in 1991 to hold a national election that meets OSCE standards for free and fair elections. The ODIHR found that the December 2005 vote that led to the reelection of President Nazarbaev, who has ruled Kazkakhstan since the end of the Soviet era, was "flawed."[7] And after the August 2007 parliamentary elections, the ODIHR stated that the elections "did not meet a number of OSCE commitments, in particular with regard to elements of the legal framework and to the vote count and tabulation" and "interrupted an ongoing dialogue on election legislation."[8] In those elections, Kazakhstan's ruling party, Nur Otan, won 88 percent of the vote. No opposition parties cleared the 7 percent threshold to win seats.[9]

Opposition leaders denounced the elections as fraudulent and called for new elections in an August 28 letter to President Nazarbaev. But the president brushed off all criticism and claimed that the one-party parliament was a "wonderful opportunity to adopt all the laws needed to speed up our country's economic and political modernization."[10]

The Alga! (Forward!) Party, an opposition liberal democratic party, has not been able to register for nearly three years and could not participate in the 2007 vote. Alga! was founded on the remains of the Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (known by the Russian acronym DVK) , an opposition political party whose leaders-who had both been members of the ruling political and economic elite-were imprisoned in 2002, and which the government dissolved in 2005.[11] On February 20, 2006, the Ministry of Justice denied Alga! registration on the grounds that the party had not provided sufficient evidence of its membership. Vladimir Kozlov, chair of Alga!'s Coordinating Committee, told Human Rights Watch that the authorities had pressured "state-budget-dependent members [budzhetniki, in Russian]"-persons such as students, pensioners, residents of state-managed dormitories, and public servants-to resign from the party.[12] The Astana Municipal Court and the Supreme Court upheld the Ministry of Justice decision later that year. In November 2006 Alga! submitted a new registration application and has been awaiting approval since then. Kozlov noted that in not registering Alga!, the government is not violating any legal provision, as the law on political parties does not prescribe a period during which a party has to be registered. Therefore Alga! cannot file a complaint.

Because the draft amendments to the laws on elections and political parties sent to parliament on November 11, 2008 have not been made public, Human Rights Watch has not been able to review the texts, so information and analysis in this report about their provisions is based on government statements and civil society commentary.

Under the draft amendments, political parties must still gain 7 percent of the vote in order to be represented in parliament, but at least two political forces must be represented in parliament, no doubt a response to strong criticism of the 2007 parliamentary election.[13] If only one party gets past the 7 percent threshold, then parliamentary seats may be distributed to the party garnering the next largest number of votes, though the government statement did not say how the draft envisages apportioning these seats. The government draft lowers from 50,000 to 40,000 the minimum number of supporters in order for the party to be registered (notably, prior to the adoption of the 2002 Law on Political Parties the minimum number of required supporters was 3,000),[14] and extends the registration deadline from two to four months. The draft also lowers from 700 to 600 the minimum number of supporters required in each province of Kazakhstan.

The draft amendments do not appear to address the fundamental problems that have marred Kazakhstan's national elections and checks and balances in its political system. In early 2008 the government formed a working group, which included civil society organizations, to develop the draft amendments,[15]  but as described below some of the key concerns put forward by civil society appear not to have been addressed in the draft. NGO members of the working group told Human Rights Watch that they were prevented from considering the repeal of seriously flawed provisions of the elections law,[16]and it is unclear whether the as yet unpublished government draft addresses them: for example, there are currently no term limits for Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev; he has sweeping powers to dissolve parliament, is able to appoint a third of the members of the upper chamber, and chooses the chair and two members of the seven-member Central Election Commission.