long serving president, nursultan nazabayev, finally leaves power?s today is the chairman of the kazakh senate and the de facto number two to the president, kassym—jomart tokayev. is kazakhstan tiring of 1—party rule? kassym—jomart tokayev, welcome to heart talk. you have spoken about the subtle balance in this country between stability and democracy. do you think kazakhstan has the balance right? i am sure the kazakhstan has reached the right balance between stability and democracy. stability isa stability and democracy. stability is a must for us. democracy is a must for us equally. at the same time, stability should not be guaranteed or should, at the price of democracy. said the reason i was saying that there is a subtle balance between both stability and democracy, we must be stable but at the same time we must be democratic. i see the stability. that is obvious because you have had the same leader for 27 years. since independence and the collapse of the soviet union. democracy, i am less certain about because when you look at the political cult

however the two parties in the lower house that are not the ruling party, they basically supports nazabayev to the regime. you do not have any genuine opposition because, frankly, the biggest opposition party, the democratic choice party, has been banned. it is illegal. we have no such party, democratic choice. if we speak about the rule of law, we need to acknowledge that there is no existence of this party since the general prosecutor proclaimed that this party has been prohibited in carrying out activities in kazakhstan. that is exactly my point. you have banned the only real opposition voice in the country. the leader of that party is living in exile, having been imprisoned, or convicted in absentia. as a matter of fact we do not have such a party because what is the party? the party means that it needs to be registered by the ministry ofjustice. there was no registration, there was no procedure of registration by the ministry ofjustice. and you do not feel when you tell me that that that sounds rather evocative of the times of the soviet union? i would not say so because i used to live