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Kazakhstan: Adventures in Democracy

9 Oct

Lord Venal has been on the observation trail once again – here are his reflections from his recent trip to Kazakhstan to observe the Senate elections [Editor’s note: This was in an unofficial capacity as Lord Venal is barred from observer missions after last year’s vicious smear campaign orchestrated by the Azeri authorities]

Democracy is inching along in Kazakhstan with the free and fair elections to the country’s upper chamber, the Senate, paying testament to this.

“We have been witnesses to an open and democratic electoral process. We congratulate the people of Kazakhstan and the election organizers,” Kazakhstan’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC) told Spain’s EFE news agency, reported Fox News Latino.

The ruling Nur Otan party, loyal to the Leader of the Nation Nursultan Nazarbayev, swept the board gaining every seat in the new-look Senate.

Some 250 observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization were present for the vote on October 1.

Those party-poopers at The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe did not send observers due to the “indirect” nature of the elections, CEC Chairman Kuandyk Turgankolov said.

The Senate consists of 47 members – 15 are appointed by President Nazarbayev and the others are elected by the lower house, the Mazhilis, with 16 places up for grabs every three years. The senators serve a six-year term.

Could not the UK learn a lesson from Kazakhstan in these matters? The House of Lords, where I sit, is an unelected body. Maybe the Queen, as Head of State, could appoint some of its members with the rest selected by a vote in the House of Commons?

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Googoosha – How Dare!

17 Sep

Shocking photos of a haggard looking Gulnara Karimova grappling with a police officer have been leaked from Uzbekistan.

In the words of one of her famous songs in her guise of pop diva Googoosha, she seems to be saying ‘How Dare‘ to the cop.

Let’s hope she’s not giving her captors the ‘Round Run‘ in those nice slippers.

Karimova is the eldest daughter of President Islam Karimov. She has suffered a spectacular fall from grace spending the last seven months under house arrest in Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital.

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Kokpar Scandal Rocks World Nomad Games

12 Sep

The first edition of the World Nomad Games, currently being held in Kyrgyzstan, have been rocked by scandal as Kazakhstan refused to send a team to compete in kokpar, the fast and furious horseback sport akin to polo but played with a headless goat carcass.

Its absence will be felt at these games as last September Kazakhstan became the first ever Asian champions of the sport when it defeated fierce rivals Kyrgyzstan 4-2 in the final held in Kazakhstan’s snazzy capital Astana.

kazaxia took to twitter to determine why Kazakhstan hadn’t sent a team to the games in Kyrgyzstan. One observer, Edil Baisalov, noted that the Kazakhs “insist on a different set of rules” which they claim were “adopted at the Asian championship in Astana last year”.

The other countries disagreed with this version of events, Baisalov added.

Kokpar,  better known as ‘buzkashi’ in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, is not a sport traditionally hidebound by rules.  In the past kokpar games were a free-for-all that could last for hours.

Now, seeking to appeal to a wider audience and the television market, there have been suggestions that the sport be regulated with two 45-minute halves and restrictions on team sizes.

The version played in Afghanistan has been suggested as an international model with rules developed by the Afghan Olympic Federation. These rules suggest that:

For championship Buzkashi in Kabul, teams are limited to ten riders each. Five players take the field during the first 45 minutes of play; the other five compete during the second period. A field master presides over the match and has the authority to prolong the game and grant permission for a change of riders or horses. The halftime break lasts for 15 minutes.

The World Nomad Games, being held in Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan, by the shores of Lake Issyk Kul, brings together competitors from countries with a nomadic tradition for a six-day festival of traditional sports. The games culminate on 14 September.

Besides kokpar, the sports include horse races, wrestling on horse back, contact sports based on wrestling, eagle hunting, and the more cerebral ordo, and toguz korgool, a board game related to mankala.  For more information on these sports, check out here.

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Kazakhstan: The Axe-Man Cometh

7 Aug

President Nazarbayev returned to Kazakhstan from his July holidays as a man on a mission to trim back the excesses of his government’s bloated bureaucracy.

It must have been an uncomfortable experience for the government bigwigs assembled in Akorda, the president’s Astana HQ, as the axe fell repeatedly with ministries and agencies being culled and merged left, right and centre. After the dust had settled, Kazakhstan was left with 12 ministries from its former tally of 17.

Kazaxia has had a look at some of the main changes: the biggest shock was the merging of the Family Affairs and Nepotism ministries, bringing the bodies for providing jobs for clan and family members and other assorted hangers-on under one umbrella. This is set to cause some friction in the months ahead as former ministers scrabble to place their kith and kin in cushy numbers. It should be a bloody battle with the trough having been significantly downsized.

The Ministry of Privatisations was merged with the Nationalisation Ministry in a move that will effectively paralyse attempts by Astana to either buy or sell its ailing industrial base. The Corruption Agency was brought under the auspices of the Ministry for Investment to streamline procedures for investors.

The energy sector also saw major changes. The Agency for Renewable Energy was subsumed by the Ministry for Fossil Fuels to create a powerful lobby group for the extractive industries. Eco fanatics will be further enraged by the decision to place the Environmental Protection Agency under the wing of the Ministry for Urban Development. This should pave the way for controversial projects such as the Kok-Zhailau ski resort to proceed unhindered.

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Psychic Saiga Predicts World Cup Winner

12 Jun

A  saiga with psychic powers, located in a secret location somewhere on the steppe in Kazakhstan is predicting a victory for Argentina in the 2014 World Cup Final in Brazil.

Eingebaute Klimaanlage. Die bucklige Nase hilft den Saiga-Antilopen, Atemluft anzuwärmen und abzukühlen. So kommt sie im extremen Wetter der Steppe zurecht. Foto: dpa

A shaman contacted kazaxia  about the psychic saiga – it points a horn at one of two lamb bones bearing an etching of the national flags of the competing teams to select the winner. The unnamed saiga predicts that Argentina will triumph over England in the final. Brazil and Germany will be the unlucky losing semi-finalists, with the Germans grabbing third place on penalties.

For the competition’s opening match between Brazil and Croatia the long-nosed antelope refused to select a bone, suggesting the game could be a draw. For more predictions you can follow @psychicsaiga on twitter.

Saigas, which are members of the antelope family, once roamed the Eurasian steppe from the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains and the Caucasus into Mongolia and Dzungaria. Their numbers are now critically endangered with herds restricted to  areas of Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.  

 

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Kazakhstan: Village People Target Marriage

21 May

On a rising tide of intolerance in Kazakhstan, an anti-gay splinter group calling itself Aulbaylar (Village People), representing traditional Kazakhstani rural values, has threatened to target marriage.

“The vast majority of gays and lesbians were brought up in the traditional nuclear family environment so we plan to build walls around zags [registry office] buildings and put a stop to this pernicious institution of marriage,” a spokesperson for Aulbaylar told kazxaia.

The spokesperson pointed out that conventional marriages are by far the main contributor to rising numbers of gay and lesbian people on planet earth.

This latest threatened wall-erection comes a week after a group built a wall in front of a gay club in the commercial capital to protest same-sex marriage – a strange thing to do as same-sex weddings do not exist in Kazakhstan.

Kazaxia asked Doctor Gött of The Gött Institute of Sexology to verify these claims about the link between homosexuality and marriage.

“Statistics prove that you are far more likely to be gay or lesbian if brought up by a heterosexual married couple rather than a same-sex one. The arguments about gay adoption and same-sex marriage simply don’t wash,” Gött told kazaxia by email.

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Vladimir Putin’s Neo-Colonial Can of Worms

18 Apr

Lord Venal has shared his thoughts with kazaxia on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Q&A on April 17.

In this Q&A Putin called into question the status of Ukraine, referring to parts of the threatened country as ‘Novorossiya’.

Here’s what Putin had to say:

I would like to remind you that what was called Novorossiya (New Russia) back in the tsarist days – Kharkov, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Nikolayev and Odessa – were not part of Ukraine back then. These territories were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet government. Why? Who knows. They were won by Potyomkin and Catherine the Great in a series of well-known wars. The centre of that territory was Novorossiysk, so the region is called Novorossiya.

Let’s apply this Putinlogic to some other cases:

1. Orenburg

Orenburg, now in the Russian Federation, stradles Europe and Asia and once functioned as the capital of the Kirghiz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic – present-day Kazakhstan. It served as the capital from 1920-1925, after which the republic was renamed the Kazak Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Kyzylorda was made the capital, while Orenburg joined mother Russia.

So the question here is should Orenburg rejoin Kazakhstan as Putin proposes for Novorossiya?

2. Calais

Following the annexation of Calais, in northern France, by England’s King Edward III in 1347, the area was a territorial possession of England until the perfidious French captured it in 1558. In fact, the very first of the Venal line fought in the ultimately doomed defence of Calais (on the English side).

There are reports that representatives of England’s elite blue-rinse brigade have been landed in Calais as a vanguard for any operation to annex the port. My cousin saw a number of grannies in the hypermarkets of Calais stocking up on cheap booze and cigs. They were speaking English with distinctive regional accents.

[Editor’s note: When kazaxia contacted Britain’s Ministry of Defence to verify if these grannies were indeed linked to the UK government, it received no answer as the Ministry is taking a day off for Good Friday.]

Pro-England separatists stocking up on cheap booze in Calais

If England were to invoke its territorial claims, following Putinlogic, and re-take Calais – as Russia has annexed Crimea, then I would hope to be able to reclaim the ancestral Venal seat in the Pas de Calais.

Finally, I could return the impoverished Venal legacy to its former glory and not have to grub around the world looking for election observing handouts.

By the way, if anyone in Orenburg or Calais wants a referendum, I would be only too pleased to observe the legitimacy of the process.

 

 

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Customs Union says Boycott America, Buy Russian

26 Mar

In a bid to show solidarity with Russia’s invasion of Crimea, kazaxia has it on good authority that officials in the Customs Union stalwart of Kazakhstan are reportedly being asked to give up their iPhones and iPads and use Russian technology instead of the products of America’s Apple Corporation.

This goes one step further than Russia itself, which has seen its officials switch to Samsung tablets over security concerns.

Here is a picture of the latest in Russian-built mobile technology, assembled in Sevastopol – the Putinov Crimea 16-03-14:

 

 

 

 

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Uzbekistan: Googoosha Ensnared by Wizard of Uz

25 Mar

In a shocking new twist to the tale of Googoosha, Lord Venal has received a hand-written note smuggled out of Uzbekistan from the secret location where the fallen princess is being kept under alleged house arrest.

The note was written in lipstick on the back of a Sarbast beermat after the evil henchmen of a sinister and mysterious figure – referred to by Googoosha as the Wizard of Uz – confiscated all the pens and pencils from her gilded cage.

Googoosha claims that the Wicked Witch of West Tashkent, her mother Tatiana Karimova, has cast a spell that has cut off access to twitter in her prison.

In the note she calls on Lord Venal to help her find a yellow brick road away from this nightmare scenario, but with the net of corruption allegations closing around Googoosha in Europe, not even the good Lord and his contacts may be able to rescue this princess.

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Kazakhstan: Nauryz Under Threat?

21 Mar

As Kazakhstan prepares to celebrate Nauryz, fears are growing  that this year could be the last time that the festival is celebrated as more details of Project Verny, the sinister plot to annex the country, are revealed.

A spokesperson for Project Verny told kazaxia that “Nauryz does not conform to the cultures and traditions of ethnic Russians living in Central Asia. When the region is incorporated into the Central Asian Federal District, the festival will be replaced by  a more Russia-focused celebration”.

Nauryz, the spring equinox celebration in Kazakhstan, is celebrated on March 22 and marks the start of the new year. The holiday was banned in Soviet times and was only revived in the 1990s after the Soviet yoke was thrown off.

After the annexation of Crimea by a Russian-backed goblin army, Kazakhstan could be next on the list. Following annexation, nauryz could be replaced with an Easter-themed holiday for this Muslim-majority region, a celebration of Lenin’s birth or a commemoration of the day Vladimir Zhirinovsky became a member of the komsomol in his native Alma-ata, present-day Almaty.

[Editor’s note: Zhirinovsky is being mooted as the de-facto leader of the proposed Central Asian Federal District. The capital of the region will be Almaty, reverting to its one-time name of Verny].

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