President Tokayev pays tribute to predecessor’s assassinated political opponent 

In a surprise gesture, President Tokayev has paid tribute to one of his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev’s biggest political opponents. 

A former governor of Almaty Region and emergencies minister, Zamanbek Nurkadilov was officially said to have killed himself in 2005 by firing three shots into his own chest.   

Nurkadilov had parted ways with Nazarbayev, in a bold and flamboyant way, in 2004, calling a press conference to accuse him of making billions of dollars through corruption and urge him to resign.  

A representative of the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus, Nurkadilov was nonetheless a people’s politician who put national interests first and did not mince his words. 

The 80th anniversary of his birth was marked over the weekend in Almaty by family, friends and associates.  

In a letter, read out at the event by the president’s spokesman Berik Uali, President Tokayev described Nurkadilov as “a known official and public figure”, who “worked selflessly in the interests of the people”. 

He said it was “necessary” to erect a monument in his memory in Nurkadilov’s home village and put a memorial plaque on his house in Almaty.  

Letters paying tribute to Nurkadilov were also sent by the speakers of parliament’s upper and lower houses, Maulen Ashimbayev and Yerlan Koshanov respectively. 

The move has been received by Nurkadilov’s supporters as a step towards his full political rehabilitation, raising hopes for a new investigation into his death, which is widely believed to have been a political assassination.  

Former opposition leader Bolat Abilov described the development as “a kind of political, historical and moral rehabilitation of our Zake [Nurkadilov]”. 

Journalist Qasym Amanjol said Tokayev’s proposal to put up a monument to Nurkadilov was not good enough.  

“If Tokayev wants to establish the truth, before sending a letter with a promise to open a monument in his home village, he should have given an order to the Chief Prosecutor’s Office to reopen an investigation into his death ‘by shooting himself in the chest three times’ and set up an independent commission to monitor the new investigation,” Amanjol said. 

MP and longtime opposition journalist Yermurat Bapi said that it was a sign that Kazakhstan was “moving forward”. 

“A commission must be set up now to look into the circumstances of the late Zamanbek’s death,” he said. 

He added that “then there will come the turn of the late Altynbek [Sarsenbayev]”, another opponent of Nazarbayev’s who was shot dead, along with his driver and bodyguard, in 2006. 

MP Aidos Sarym commented on the development by saying it was part of “a wider process”.  

He said Tokayev was “slowly but surely closing the past chapters of divisions and splits” within the national political elite in order to ensure “national unity and consolidation”. 

“Zamanbek Nurkadilov’s rehabilitation closes one of the very bad chapters in our modern history,” Sarym said.  

Another MP, Kazybek Isa, said that the rehabilitation of Nurkadilov’s name meant “drawing a line under” Nazarbayev’s “imposter rule, which for 30 years did whatever it wanted”.   

Nurkadilov was found dead in his home in Almaty weeks before the December 2005 presidential election, in which Nazarbayev won a new seven-year term. 

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