By empty (6/26/2006 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Kazakhstan\'s Asar party leader and parliamentary deputy Dariga Nazarbayeva has proposed pro- presidential political forces\' merger into a new democratically orientated party. \"Our idea is to form a new party that would bring together the existing pro-presidential parties. There are some six-eight political parties in Kazakhstan which identify themselves as pro-presidential.
Kazakhstan\'s Asar party leader and parliamentary deputy Dariga Nazarbayeva has proposed pro- presidential political forces\' merger into a new democratically orientated party. \"Our idea is to form a new party that would bring together the existing pro-presidential parties. There are some six-eight political parties in Kazakhstan which identify themselves as pro-presidential. These parries should unite,\" Nazarbayeva told Interfax on Monday. Nazarbayeva proposed this idea at her party\'s conference a week ago. She said that the new party organization should have one leader and chairman - President Nursultan Nazarbayev, and a political council as its supreme collective body. \"When I am talking about a union of pro-presidential parties I mean the formation of a new party - a new-type party, that would get rid of the negative in each of the current political organizations\' experience,\" said the leader of the Asar (All Together) party. \"We have advanced a specific common political platform which could keep these parties together, and we have sent our proposal to our colleagues in the pro-presidential bloc and are waiting for their reply and reaction,\" she said. Kazakhstan, a country with a population of 15 million, has 12 registered political parties, including three opposition parties. The governing Otan party is led by President Nazarbayev who handed his party functions over to his deputies during his tenure of the presidential post. (Interfax-Kazakhstan)