JULY 25 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh billionaire Timur Kulibayev could take over the presidency of Kazakhstan if his father-in-law, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, was forced to step down, one of Mr Nazarbayev’s top political advisers told a newspaper. Yermukhamet Yertysbayev’s statement re-ignited debate over succession plans in Kazakhstan.

ENDS

JULY 27 2011 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Kazakh constitution bans its subjects from discussing the health of Nursultan Nazarbayev, their 71-year-old leader, but a week after news leaked out that he may have visited a hospital in Germany for prostrate surgery, his succession plans have become the talk of the country.

Now Yermukhamet Yertysbayev, one of Mr Nazarbayev’s closest advisers, has suggested his son-in-law Timur Kulibayev could take over if ill health ever forced the president to step down.

“It is Kulibayev who would be able to continue the president’s strategic course, in the case of an extraordinary situation connected with the sudden departure of the head of state,” he said in an interview to the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

Hardly definitive then, but what Mr Yertsybayev says is important. The Kazakh media have dubbed him “a nightingale””for testing public opinion of potential future policies by gently floating them out through statements.

It is also perhaps the first time that Mr Kulibayev, 44, has been so publicly linked to the presidency, although he was quick to deny any interest. This year Mr Kulibayev has assumed more power. He was made head of Kazakhstan’s $80b sovereign wealth fund and also a board director at Gazprom, the Russian energy monopoly.

Earlier this year Mr Nazarbayev won an election that will keep him in power for another five years.

Kazakhs, though, have already begun discussing what happens beyond 2016.

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