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News that elder statesman Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is returning from a high-level diplomatic posting in Geneva to step into Kazakhstan’s second most important job, constitutionally speaking, has sparked renewed talk about who will succeed the long-serving president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
On October 16 Tokayev was approved as speaker of the Senate, the upper house of parliament, Novosti-Kazakhstan reports, in a unanimous vote by the rubber-stamp body. Nazarbayev put Tokayev up for the key position after sending his predecessor, Kayrat Mami, to the Supreme Court as chairman.
The role of Senate speaker is crucial because, under the constitution, this is the person who steps in to assume the reins of power should the president become incapacitated.
As Nazarbayev ages (he turned 73 in July), speculation has mounted about his succession strategy – or absence of one. Analyst Dosym Satpayev told EurasiaNet.org last year that the lack of an obvious strategy to install a successor is fraught with political risks, including the possibility of a destabilizing power struggle if Nazarbayev falls seriously ill or dies in office.
Having a safe pair of hands running the Senate is vital for the movers and shakers in Astana as they mull a strategy to hand over power in the years ahead – and Tokayev is certainly a trusted loyalist. He has served as Senate speaker before, and also has been Kazakhstan’s prime minister and foreign minister.
To take up his new position, Tokayev leaves his high-powered job as United Nations under-secretary-general and director of the United Nations Office at Geneva. When he was appointed to Geneva in 2011, evil tongues in Kazakhstan wagged that Tokayev – sometimes tipped as a future president himself – was being sidelined abroad. Now he is back in the political fray.