Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-16-Speech-4-199"
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"en.20060316.24.4-199"2
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".
Mr President, the collapse of the Soviet Union has not proved to be a guarantee for democracy – quite the opposite, in fact. Some politicians with Communist pasts may have abandoned their ideology, but are for that very reason now even less hindered than before in their manoeuvring to remain in power for the long haul or to transfer state power to their offspring. One of those sleights of hand is to extend the term in office of presidents in power by ten years or even to the end of his life by means of a referendum without the option of putting forward one or two rival candidates.
Another technique is to eliminate serious opponents by locking them up on the basis of false accusations, getting them killed in car accidents or having them simply disappear. In Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, widely-supported popular uprisings against regimes of that kind have been successful, but it remains to be seen whether those countries will be better off in the long term. So far in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and the much larger Kazakhstan, those in power have managed to break any opposition. Some have been able to use their role in the supply of energy to buy themselves powerful foreign friends.
For a long time, Kazakhstan was mainly a dry and sparsely populated area where, in the middle of a small population speaking a Turkic language, Russian colonisation took place in areas where industry or mining appeared possible or where an experimental space rocket base could be set up. Meanwhile, a new capital has been created, far from the large city of Almaty, and the influence of the Russian inhabitants is being reduced considerably.
Kazakhstan is a large, sparsely populated country, with two large population groups and the remainder consisting of minorities banished to that country from the Russian empire, and its future is extremely precarious. In our relations with it, the resolution is right to insist on due account being given not only to economic relations, but also, and above all, to political prisoners, scope for opposition, democratic decision-making and human rights."@en1
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