In another move to distance himself from his predecessor, Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has agreed to change the name of his country's capital city back to Astana from Nur-Sultan.
Toqaev's spokesman, Ruslan Zheldibai, wrote on Facebook on September 13 that the president approved the move, which will now be added to a bill of amendments to the constitution that is currently under preparation.
On September 2, members of the New Kazakhstan parliamentary group proposed changing the current name of the capital, Nur-Sultan, which honors the nation’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, to its former name -- Astana.
Toqaev first changed the name of the capital from Astana to Nur-Sultan in 2019, one day after Nazarbaev, who had run the tightly controlled former Soviet republic with an iron fist for almost three decades, announced he was resigning and that Toqaev was his handpicked successor.
Though he officially stepped down as president, Nazarbaev retained sweeping powers as the head of the Security Council. He also enjoyed substantial powers by holding the title of “elbasy” or leader of the nation.
Many citizens, however, remained upset by the oppression felt during Nazarbaev's reign.
Those feelings came to a head in January when unprecedented nationwide anti-government protests started over a fuel-price hike, and then exploded into deadly unrest around the country over perceived corruption under the Nazarbaev regime and the cronyism that allowed his family and close friends to enrich themselves while ordinary citizens failed to share in the oil-rich Central Asian nation's wealth.
Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of his Security Council role, taking it over himself. Since then, several of Nazarbaev’s relatives and allies have been pushed out of their positions or have resigned. Some have been arrested on corruption charges.
In June this year, a Toqaev-initiated referendum removed Nazarbaev's name from the constitution and annulled his status as “elbasy.”
Kazakh critics say Toqaev's initiatives were mainly cosmetic and don't change the nature of the autocratic system in a country that has been plagued for years by rampant corruption and nepotism.
Zheldibai's September 13 Facebook post noted: "At the same time, the president considers Nazarbaev's decisive role in strengthening Kazakhstan's modern statehood and the capital's formation to be a historical fact."