No commitments
Kazakhstan, Politics and Society2 Comments
General Secretary of the Parliamentary Assembly of OSCE R. Oliver Spencer has said in Astana (where the annual session of PA has been held this week) that Kazakhstan will chair the OSCE in 2010 even if the commitments, undertaken in Madrid last year, are not going to be fulfilled.
“The decision has been made, and Kazakhstan will take over chairmanship in the OSCE”, he said at the press conference, answering to the question on whether the Ministerial Council’s decision will be altered in case Kazakhstan fails to meet the commitments it made.
“Certainly, nobody will ever be ideal – especially the post-Soviet states. In some places democratization is easier, and in some places there are problems. The issue is if a country is going in the right direction”, Kazakhstan Today quotes the PA OSCE official.
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Pffff. :) Well, that is the beginning of the end of the OSCE–which is basically what Russia and Kazakhstan want by hollowing it out from the inside.
First, Kazakhstan may not be the worst in the region and perfection indeed does not exist, yet its regime is basically a refutal of everything the OSCE stands for: an oil sultanate run by a presidential family and its cronies; a one-party state following parliamentary elections declared dodgy by the very same OSCE; and a recent histroy of shabby elections and political murders.
Secondly, a precedent has been set. If Kazakhstan will chair the OSCE, what is the problem with a police state like Uzbekistan chairing the OSCE? A few cosmetic ‘reforms’ and we’re set. Or for the recognition of Transnistria?
Third, in terms of credibility among Central Asia’s population of the West as guarantor of human rights and democracy: konets filma. One more example of how Western oil and gas pragmatism ends up turning against the West.
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