Kazakhstan, the government resigns and declares a state of emergency
It was also blacked out Internet in Kazakhstan where the most important protests in the country’s post-Soviet history have been staged for three days and now the risk is that the curtain falls on what is happening. For days, anger has been mounting for the increase in the price of gpl; after demonstrators stormed and set fire to administrative buildings and after the government resigned, the state of emergency all over the country.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev he also “ousted” the “father of the nation”, Nursultan Nazarbayev, from the guide of Security Council; after having ruled the country with an iron fist for thirty years, Nazarbayev, a key ally of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, he resigned in 2019 but still firmly maintained control over the country; now that his “dolphin” has removed him, his fate is unknown.
Tokayev ensured a “firm” response at demonstrations which have few precedents in a country rich in Petroleum And gas, the economic locomotive of Central Asia but in which growing social inequalities are measured. The government resignation and the “defenestration” of Nazarbayev mark two important concessions to the protesters, but the crisis threatens to destabilize the country, the largest of the nations born from the ashes of the Soviet Union, Excluding Russia, the last to have declared independence since its dissolution, on December 16, 1991.
The Kazakh president had previously decreed it state of emergency and the two-week curfew in the western region of Mangistau, in Almaty, the country’s largest city, and in the capital, Nur-Sultan; limited gatherings and limited circulation. Speaking Russian to the nation, Tokayev he then promised reforms and made an appeal “to show prudence and not to succumb to internal and external provocations”.
But that’s not enough for now. Despite the Kazakhstan is rich in oil and gas, the quality of life is generally lower than the capital, Nur-Sultan, and to the economic capital, Almaty. Economic tensions have increased with the pandemic. The roads are in bad condition in many areas, i public services below standards and because food has to be transported over large distances, it can often become more expensive than in richer urban centers.
The country has endless Mineral Resources – 60% of those of the former Soviet Union – including iron, coal, oil, methane and various metals used in electronics and missiles; and is a major producer of Petroleum And gas, but also of uranium, the radioactive material used in nuclear power plants (last year it extracted 40% of world production). Resources that make it the first economy in Central Asia, as well as the most important producer and exporter of oil within the Commonwealth of Independent States.
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