Reports from various sources are suggesting that soon the Civil Party of Kazakhstan (CPK) will announce that it to, like that of Asar, will merge with the main pro-presidential party Otan. If anything, the move is nothing but expected. It is the logical conclusion of the National Coalition of parties which supported President Nazarbayev in the 2005 Presidential election. Asar, who also backed Nazarbayev as candidate for president, merged with Otan earlier this year.

The XII plenum of the CPK’s Central Committee was held in Almaty last week. The plenum was used to plan the sixth party congress of the CPK, which is to be held in Astana on the 10th November. The plan for the agenda of the conference includes an important debate about the president’s initiative to merge all the parties that participated in the National Coalition during the 2005 presidential election.

If the CPK does decide to merge with Otan, it can be widely assumed that the Agrarian Party will follow. Not only was the Agrarian Party part of the president’s National Coalition, but they also formed the AIST bloc with the CPK for the 2004 parliamentary elections. The two parties have been close, if not strange, bedfellows ever since.

However, not too much should be read into the possible incorporation. Both the CPK and the Agrarian Party are not considered fully functional political parties. Many argue that there is something of the ‘virtual’ about them, and that their birth was of artificial fertilisation. These organisations were created to vacuum up support for the president among agrarian and industrial constituencies . Moreover, the extent to which this amalgamation can realistically occur also needs to be questioned. It has only been in the last few weeks that Asar and Otan have officially signed an agreement on the merger of both parties, even though the announcement was made way back in the summer. It also transpires that within the parliament Asar parliamentary members continue to maintain a separate grouping, have failed to be significantly involved in Otan meetings, and maintain a separate website. It suggests that attempts at assimilating existing party structures into Otan will not be a straightforward process, with many hurdles to overcome before a mass party of over one million members will be possible.

The expansion of Otan is one of two different processes which are altering the development of Kazakhstan’s multi-party system. The other is the emergence of two new parties in recent months that, it is presumed, will both pass the stringent registration tests. The first is the new Social-Democratic party of Kazakhstan, led by Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, which this week handed over their registration documents to the Ministry of Justice. Tuyakbai’s party is positioning itself as a centre-left social democratic party based very much on the Scandinavian model. It will also clearly present itself as radical opposition party. The other new party to emerge in recent months is Атамекен. Erzhan Dosmukhamedov was elected as its chairmen last Friday at their first constituent congress. The party is selling itself as a right-centrist political party, with a commitment to business, rooting out corruption and creating transparency within business practice. The party intends to appeal to Kazakhstan’s growing middle class. It will also present itself as a pro-presidential party. Both these parties seem to have considerable financial resources, and initially, strong organisational structures.

It is these two trends, the expansion of Otan, and the emergence of two strongly organised, and financially stable political parties that are currently re-shaping the multi-party system in Kazakhstan. The extent to which these new parties, and those older parties such as Ak Zhol and True Ak Zhol, will play in future political processes will depend on the recommendations of the State Commission for Democratic Reforms. The state commission is currently debating reforms to Kazakhstan’s political system, such as to increase the number of deputies in the lower chamber, to increase the number of members being elected on party lists, greater powers for parliament (essentially parliamentary government), and a decrease of the party threshold from 7% to 5%. However, it is believed that the commission is waiting on the president to decide the path of future reforms, and it will recommend what the president suggests, and although the president has declared that ‘democracy is our choice’, we can never be certain of the outcome. And thus the future role of political parties continues to depend upon the decisions of the presidential administration.