What is Kazakhstan criticized for? (Kazakhstani POV)

Of course we can see many publications with criticism towards Kazakhstan. Actually these publications are devoted to the recent parliamentary elections campaign, which we had in Kazakhstan on the 15th of January. But talking about some criticism against Kazakhstan we can say that there are several reasons for this criticism – objective reasons, as well as subjective of course.

And talking about objective reasons we can say that last year Kazakhstan actually faced several problems of societal character. Actually there were some events which were interpreted as terrorist attacks, also there were some events in Janauzen, and also we can add, as I’ve mentioned before, elections campaign which we had last year - there were the presidential elections, and this year there were the Parliament elections. These are some very important events, which of course were evaluated by some Western experts, journalists and were placed in the western mass media.

What are the main reasons for critical position of western mass media? I think that one of the reasons is that Kazakhstan pretended to be a more important player in the international relations system. Of course you know about Kazakhstan Chairmanship in the OSCE in 2010, Kazakhstan has done many positive things. I suppose after this Chairmanship the West has overestimated the expectations, the requirements towards Kazakhstan. They would like to see speeding up liberalization in our country, as it happened in Arabic countries in Africa. And the results of the Arabic revolutions are unpredictable, but I think that is very dangerous for a state and it might even lead to loss of statehood […]