Crossroads Asia | Politics | Central Asia

An Old Turn in Kazakhstan’s Newest Party?

Rumors link Dariga Nazarbayeva to Adilet.

The “fun” part of politics in Kazakhstan is made of gossip and rumors. The latest is perhaps the most surprising. For the past couple of weeks, Kazakhstan’s social media has been buzzing with rumors of Dariga Nazarbayeva becoming the country’s vice president.

The March 15 constitutional referendum, among other things, introduced a presidentially appointed vice president position.

A career politician, Dariga Nazarbayeva is the eldest daughter of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who left power in 2019 after three decades at the helm. Once Kassym-Jomart Tokayev took power, a slow process of “de-Nazarbayevification” kicked off. The pace of this process accelerated after Qandy Qantar, the violent repression of urban protests in January 2022. At the time, elites still close to Nazarbayev were blamed for stoking the protest and orchestrating an attempted coup.

Within this context, Dariga was already on her way out of politics. She had been promoted to speaker of the Senate after Tokayev moved into the presidency, but she was dismissed in May 2020, just days before her birthday. Since Dariga was served that sour birthday present, she has been essentially absent from Kazakhstan’s political scene. She served as an MP for the ruling Nur Otan party between 2021-2022, but with far less flair compared to the previous years. In 2022, Nur Otan rebranded as Amanat. 

In January 2022, while the country was in a state of emergency, with army patrols in the streets of Almaty and limited internet access, political analyst Marat Shibutov surprisingly named her among the few people who would enjoy the support of the people of Kazakhstan.

Dariga resigned from her post just weeks later and disappeared from the public eye.

Shibutov saw his own rise to fame in political circles by pledging allegiance to the new course of the Tokayev government. He was selected to become a member of the National Kurultai – an advisory institution – and later a member of the commissions for the parliamentary and constitutional reforms.

But how did the latest rumor of Dariga becoming a vice president emerge?

On May 7, Dariga’s birthday, a new political party was founded. Adilet (“Justice” in its Kazakh translation) was established as hurriedly as the institutional reforms of the previous months were adopted. Adilet seems to embody the spirit of the new constitution. Its........

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