17^th Session of THE OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in Astana

In June 29 – July 3, 2008 Kazakhstan’s capital Astana has welcomed about 600 representatives of national parliaments of 56 countries at the 17th Annual Session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. It was the first time that the OSCE PA held its Annual Session in Central Asia. Theme of the session was “Transparency in the OSCE”.

Joao Soares of Portugal was elected as a new President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. He succeeds Goran Lennmarker of Sweden, who has served the maximum two years, since June 2006. The delegates at the Assembly’s Annual Session also elected four new Vice Presidents: Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Kazakhstan; Wolfgang Grossruck, Austria; Pia Christmas-Moeller, Denmark; and Oleh Bilorus, Ukraine.

The opening day’s events took place in the presence of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the two Chairmen of the Kazakh Parliament, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev (Senate) and Aslan Mussin (Mazhilis). In his speech at the opening ceremony President Nazarbayev noted that “Kazakhstan’s way” of democratic society development is a realistic scenario, advantage of which consists in the effective achievement of the goal.

President’s speech accented Kazakhstan’s determination to become a modern, democratic and prosperous country, providing further development of democratic processes and improvement of the public institutional settings alongside with the social and economic progress of Kazakhstan’s society.

Since the end of last year a purposeful work has been implemented to improve legislation and law-enforcement practice in the field of elections, political parties and the Mass Media.

Representatives of the Office of OSCE Special Representative in Kazakhstan noted positive dynamics of the developments proposed by the Kazakh side, which may be accomplished by the end of this year through adoption of a Law regarding making amendments to certain legislation acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Supposedly by the end of this year will be elaborated a legal mechanism enabling to form the Lower Chamber of the Kazakh Parliament with participation with no less than two parties and ensuring more favorable conditions for state registration of political parties (decreasing quantitative requirements for the parties registration, continuation of registration process under the revealed minor wrongdoings in the lists and the others).

There is an immense work that has been done in the field of improving the electoral legislation. Central Electoral Commission has approved the Plan designed to implement the recommendations made by ODIHR, which was coordinated with the Office.

The series of “round table” meetings are to be arranged as well, outcomes of which are expected to enable the elaboration of specific amendments into the draft of the future Law on introduction amendments into the electoral legislation. Thus, today ODIHR, political parties and NGO’s have submitted more than 200 proposals.

Certain amount of amendments has already been selected and proposed for integration into the draft Law on introducing amendments and additions into the Constitutional Law “Elections in the Republic of Kazakhstan”. They, in particular, concern such issues, as elimination of certain restrictions at registration of candidates, more precise normative order for activities of electoral commissions, the order of holding pre-electoral agitation measures, counting, summing up and publication of results of voting, including the ones to be made via electronic voting and others.

The draft Law is expected to be submitted to the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan by the end of this year.

A certain progress has been achieved on the issues related to mitigation of the punishment for defamation. Thus, from December 2007 to the end of January 2008 the Office of the OSCE Special representative for media freedom due to the request of Kazakh side held an expertise of the respective draft legislation. The experts noted the serious achievements such as exclusion of imprisonment and its substitution by mandatory workload for a sentenced person. In the very end the punishment for defamation may be minimized up to payment of fine.

The legislation draft does not contain the responsibility for slandering in the mass media as a qualifying attribute. Furthermore, as a result of the first round of talks the second version of the document was elaborated. It also excludes the responsibility for slandering in publicly circulated product (additional recommendation of the Office of Miklos Harasti).

The document is currently under the repeated OSCE expertise, whose outcomes are to result in the meeting between representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan (authority that drafted the legislation) and the Office of Miklos Harasti to settle the final approaches.

It is essential to note the existing fruitful interaction between the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan and ODIHR on monitoring of the court proceedings. The 1^st and the 2^nd stages of the monitoring have already been held in Kazakhstan.

Results of the second stage of monitoring of the court proceedings with participation of jurymen were fixed at the report made by ODIHR, whose presentation was held in June 18, 2008. The report accents that in most of the cases law-enforcement authorities have followed the criminal-remedial norms and tried to hold them in proper time and in correspondence with requirements fixed at the law.

It is worthwhile to mention that ODIHR experts admit a sufficiently high level of national legislation development in the given area, and are performing a research on the remedial part of law-enforcement in Kazakhstan.

Issues of Kazakhstan’s chairmanship at the OSCE in 2010, abovementioned activity of Kazakhstan’s authorities in political liberalization process, implementing of European experience in institutional and legal reforms as well as development of cooperation with European countries in the areas of technology exchange, energy, transport, trade and investments are envisaged in “The way to Europe” programme. The idea of elaboration of such programme has been announced before by President N.Nazarbayev in his Annual Speech to the people of Kazakhstan. It is expected that in the closest future the Programme will be submitted by the Government on approval by President.

Thus, Kazakhstan implements the thesis of liberal vector of internal reorganization. The expected date of their accomplishment is end of 2008.

All the reorganizations in social and political spheres are logically imposed by internal developments of Kazakhstan and are conducted with regard to the national and cultural features of the country based to principle of preservation of society’s internal stability.

Kazakhstan is adhered to conduct the further political reformations toward democracy, transparency and openness. That means that the recommendations of foreign partners regarding these reformations that comply with Kazakhstan’s interests are also considered.

On the threshold of taking the post of political leader of the OSCE in 2010 Kazakhstan confirms its solid adherence to the democratic reforms.