Kazakhstan’s New Leadership Still Following Old Leadership’s Path

Kazakhstan’s New Leadership Still Following Old Leadership’s Path

Share to Linkedin Former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev shakes hands with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ... [+] during a congress of the ruling Nur Otan party in Nur-Sultan on April 23, 2019. (Photo by Stanislav FILIPPOV / AFP) Last month, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was re-elected to what has become Central Asia's most geopolitically and economically important country – Kazakhstan. Everyone knew he would win. His tenure follows political upheaval that began in 2022 as an old guard and new guard clashed. The reformist policies of past leadership, led by Nursultan Nazarbayev until 2019, a man whose successor named the capital after him (and then named it back to Astana) and who by law was referred as the country's First President, are still in place. Nazarbayev and his younger predecessor are following the same path in many ways. "Kazakhstan has always done a good job of balancing the competing interests of China, Russia and the West, and we don't see this changing going forward," says David Nicholls, a portfolio manager at East Capital. "This is especially true with Tokayev, who is a technocrat president with strong international experience that speaks Chinese, Russian, and English," he said. Tokayev also speaks his native Kazakh language,