The two-day international forum “Evolution of the party-political system of Kazakhstan: challenges, achievements and prospects”, organized by the Institute for Public Policy of the Nur Otan party, continues its work in the capital, Zakon.kz reports.
Various foreign experts spoke at the forum, including Antonio Alonso Marcos, professor of the Spanish University CEU San Pablo, who focused on the effectiveness of the work of political parties.
There are now about 5,000 political parties in Spain, and they are mostly useless. Only 21 of them have representation in Parliament. In many European countries, including Spain, democracy has existed for over 200 years, but we have never had female leaders, only at the regional level. The Nur Otan Party recently held primaries, which has helped to increase the representation of women in legislative and representative bodies. This is a good case from Nur Otan, because the main enemies of democracy are ignorance and populism. – Professor of the Spanish University CEU San Pablo Antonio Alonso Marcos
In turn, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs of the Higher School of Public Policy of Nazarbayev University Riccardo Pelizzo noted that studies of the post-Soviet space in recent years prove an indisputable fact – the economic achievements of the countries of Central Asia, especially Kazakhstan, became possible only thanks to political stability.
Let’s take a look at the history of Kazakhstan. For 30 years of independence, the country’s economic growth has surpassed the success of Singapore. As an example: in Kazakhstan, GDP per capita in 1991 was about one thousand US dollars, and in 2013 – more than 13 thousand, and no country over the past 100 years has been able to achieve this, not even Singapore. -Professor of the Spanish University CEU San Pablo Antonio Alonso Marcos
The speaker stressed that the key role of political stability is the state of the party system, in which there is agreement and there are no various populist and extremely radical movements.
During the years of independence, Nur Otan has been able to consolidate its forces, and thus the fragmentation of parties that was observed in the 1990s has decreased. In general, fragmentation is bad, it does not allow Parliament to approve good laws, and the life of the coalition governments created from representatives of many parties is extremely short. As a result, this approach leads to the destruction of the constitutional order. – Professor of the Spanish University CEU San Pablo Antonio Alonso Marcos
Another expert, chief editor of The London Post, Shahid Qureshi, commented on the process of increasing women’s participation in the political life of Kazakhstan. In his opinion, only equal opportunities for participation in social and political processes can become a guarantee of the development of democracy.
Democracy is useless without high ethical standards. Democracy is not just what is written on paper, it is a whole system in which the role of women is very important. Only if women enter politics with the same opportunities as men, then this is true. I am against such a system where women are only symbolically represented in politics. There should be no separation or special relationship depending on gender. – Chief Editor of The London Post, Shahid Qureshi
