'Old man out!': Anger in Kazakhstan focuses on ex-leader
09 January, 2022
As protesters armed with sticks and discarded police shields prepared to storm the mayor's office in Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty, they marched to chants of "Old man out!"
They were not referring to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, 68, but Nursultan Nazarbayev, the octogenarian who after more than a quarter of a century in office picked career diplomat Tokayev as his loyalist successor in 2019.
Since Kazakhstan's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Nazarbayev has been synonymous with the world's ninth-largest country, a majority-Muslim Central Asian state rich in oil.
But the 81-year-old has yet to appear in public since the country plunged into unprecedented chaos this week when armed clashes between protesters and police escalated from demonstrations over a New Year fuel price hike.
For many residents of the city of 1.8 million people, the strongman who styles himself as a force for stability in the wider region is an increasingly incendiary and divisive figure.
"Kazakhstan has been turned into a private company of the Nazarbayevs!" vented a 58-year-old called Saule, as Almaty residents surveyed the charred, bullet-strewn territory of the presidential residence whose now-battered gates open out onto a street named after him.
"One clan lives well and everyone else is in poverty," complained Yermek Alimbayev, a builder who was chatting with volunteers manning a makeshift checkpoint in the city, where Kazakh military and a force from the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) have secured strategic buildings.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
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