Kazakhstan: prosecutors call bloggers, activists and political scientists for election polls

Prosecutors summon bloggers, activists, political scientists and public figures for their publications on social networks related to election polls. According to prosecutors, such publications are a violation of electoral legislation.

 

Daniyar Ashimbaev, a well-known political scientist of Kazakhstan, editor-in-chief of the biographical encyclopedia “Who’s who in Kazakhstan”, was one of the first to report the summons to the Prosecutor’s office.

“In the evening, a district police officer came to me, brought a summons to the Prosecutor’s office,” Ashimbaev told the ACCA correspondent. “The reason for the summons was allegedly a public opinion poll, which I published on my Telegram channel. Indeed, on December 11, I posted the following poll: ‘For whom will you vote? For those / for these / I have not decided / I will not’. I have not conducted any other polls since December 2.”

Ashimbaev said that he had reported this to an employee of the Prosecutor’s office. And in response, he said that any polls were prohibited from the day the elections were announced. The President of Kazakhstan announced the date of the parliamentary elections on October 21, 2020.

“I checked the election law. It doesn’t indicate from what time it is forbidden to conduct polls to individuals, but the article itself is in the chapter “Pre-election campaigning”, and the campaign began, if my memory serves me right, on December 10. So, from December 10, only legal entities with 5 years of experience, who have notified the Central Election Commission, can conduct polls. Unspecified norms on conducting public opinion polls give government agencies a big lag for crackdown, especially where it is not needed. The involved bodies interpret the law very broadly,” Ashimbaev emphasized.

However, the next day he received a call from the Prosecutor’s office and said that they had carried out a check and there were no grounds for his visit.

Meanwhile, in the capital of Kazakhstan, prosecutors also called bloggers and activists because of their interviews. One of those, who received the summons, was blogger Makhambet Abzhan. The reason for the summons was also a poll published by Abzhan on his Telegram channel in November. He was interested in the opinion of subscribers, “What political party would you vote for if there were no falsifications?”

On December 21, he received the summons from the Prosecutor’s office of Baikonur region of Nur-Sultan.

“I went to the prosecutor. He explained that conducting polls on the topic of elections is allowed only to legal entities based on the permission from the Central Election Commission. Under the Code of Administrative Offenses, they can fine me 10 monthly estimate indicators (approximately $ 60). There will be no punishment for the first time, but in the future such polls are not needed. They said that many bloggers had already been warned, but refused to name the figure. Well, I’m a law-abiding person, so I pledged not to do polls on elections. I’m glad to know that my Telegram channel is read by the Prosecutor’s office,” Abzhan wrote on Facebook.

Another well-known blogger and social activist Nasima Korganbekova received a similar summons from the Prosecutor’s office of Baikonur region.

“Over many years of work, the Prosecutor’s office has not realized that it is supervisory and not punitive structure, that it was created to defend our rights, but not all this. In the morning, the head of the department of Baikonur region called me, introduced himself and said that I was being summoned to the office of the city Prosecutor’s office because of the post (publication on Facebook). I called them back and asked for the official summons. In response, they said, ‘yes, of course, we can send you a summons, we can organize a drive. After the word drive…

I called them back to find out exactly what post they were talking about, so that we could make a legal assessment and take further action. They replied that they would not say and the whole dialogue would take place at the meeting … What prevents me from thinking that this is only the beginning of what we will face?” Korganbekova wrote on Facebook.

However, the next day, as in the case of Ashimbaev, the Prosecutor’s office canceled the meeting with Korganbekova.

Meanwhile, Gulmira Ileuova, Director of the public foundation Center for Social and Political Research “Strategy”, said that her organization, the Central Election Commission (CEC) of Kazakhstan, had denied the right to conduct polls. This is despite the fact that “Strategy” is one of the oldest and most experienced institutions in Kazakhstan, specializing in sociological surveys of public opinion.

It should be clarified that a legal entity doesn’t need to obtain permission from the CEC to conduct surveys, but must notify it.

However, in its response to the notification of the foundation “Strategy”, the CEC stated that the foundation hadn’t submitted all the necessary documents, and therefore it was denied in conducting polls.

According to Ileuova, such a decision by the CEC is revenge for her interview with exclusive.kz Internet portal.

However, the head of the CEC administration, Aliya Galimova, doesn’t conceal this in her response to the foundation “Strategy”:

“We inform you that your interview with the Internet edition exclusive.kz contains a number of misrepresentations of facts. Below are examples with justification. Quote: “The requirements of the CEC are practically a ban on the profession.” Requirements for sending notifications about polling are not established by the CEC, but by the law “On elections”. Quote: “Plus, you can’t publish figures after the elections! I can still explain the ban before the elections, but why not after them?” This statement is not true. We hope that you will adjust your opinion and publicly expressed judgments taking into account the above positions,” the CEC wrote in its response.

“In general, the CEC took offense at me and took revenge,” Ileuova said about this.

Recall that the parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan are scheduled for January 10, 2021.