Kazakhstan: Politics and Tractors · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

These weeks the bloggers have been chewing upon traditionally prominent topics on the Kazakhstani blogosphere — politics and economy.
Megakhuimyak says [ru] – “without aspiration to make a global-scale conclusion” – that
80 percent of the political public officials at the age older than 50 have obtained their current position autonomously. While 80 percent of the political public officials that are younger than 40 have succeeded because they are children or relatives of those who are in the first category.
Although ironic, it might be true to some extent. Probably this fact causes dissatisfaction of some people with the level of expertise in the state apparatus.
I wonder, how low should the economic indices fall further, so that somebody started thinking about the ways to stop the current “unprofessionalism and negligence festival” and began to deal with improvement of effectiveness of the economy,
says ehot [ru]. The foreign politics is also in focus of the bloggers’ attention. Presiden-elect of Russia D.Medvedev has been on his first foreign official trip after assuming the functions of the head of the state, paying the visit to Kazakhstan. Epolet shares some notes on the occasion, trying to cool down heated delight over this fact [ru]:
In Kazakhstan it is believed that the first foreign trip of Medvedev to Kazakhstan is a sign of special relations between the two countries. But Astana is on the way to China – so it's a kind of a courtesy sign to Beijing.  Besides, meeting with Nazarbayev is not the first top-level meeting for Medvedev – shortly before the trip to Astana the president-elect met with the Mongolian president in Kremlin.
Meanwhile, scandals of various kinds are never in deficit in Kazakhstan. Alim-atenbek opines on the most recent fuss over the British royal family, as Prince Andrew stroke a deal with a little-known Kazakh businessman on sale of the his residence in England at a price that was considerably higher, than the market estimates [ru]:
I must remind that this is not the first such deal with the participation of Kazakh capital – there were nearly three big deals of a kind earlier. Perhaps, Prince Andrew had to sell his house due to his unemployed position. Although he patronize Kazakh-British Society in London. Kenes Rakishev (a person, who bought the house) heads SAT Holding and is a nephew of Imangali Tasmagambetov (a key politician, currently the mayor of Astana).
But not everything is about politics and money in the Kazakh blogosphere. Lili-blond is distressed with the destruction of apple gardens around Almaty as the lands are given away to construction firms for commercial housing projects [ru]:
Our dacha (cottage in the suburb) was cradled in the hills, covered by apple gardens. Somebody bought this land. Today the tractor came to destroy the green trees. It was just running over the trees; it was a horrible sound. What we had there – cukoos, cicadas and pheasants and owls – will be gone soon. Soon there will be an urbanistic landscape. We won't have chipmunks on the attic any more. I know, the city's growing, but why it should be done so wildly? The city is unacceptable for living, and the suburbs will soon become the same.
Marlengo shares some thoughts about ecology in Astana [ru]:
It seems like steppe winds and dust storms are not enough for the city hall, which has a special plan to dust all lawns, houses and residents of Astana. That's why they bought those little spry tractors that have revolving brushes so that they could raise the dust from pavements and “decorate” the people.
Also posted on neweurasia.