Over 40 percent of Kazakh citizens believe that former president Nursultan Nazarbayev's decision to step down before the expiration of his term was timely, a recent poll by Kazakh bureau for express monitoring of public opinion Demoscope showed
NUR-SULTAN (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd April, 2019) Over 40 percent of Kazakh citizens believe that former president Nursultan Nazarbayev's decision to step down before the expiration of his term was timely, a recent poll by Kazakh bureau for express monitoring of public opinion Demoscope showed.Nazarbayev, who has been ruling the country for almost 20 years, announced his resignation in a televised address to the nation on March 20. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, former chairman of the upper chamber of the Kazakh parliament, was sworn in as president and will perform these duties until the presidential election in 2020.
While 87 percent of the respondents have a positive assessment of Nazarbayev's achievements as the country's president, 44 percent of those interviewed believe that his early resignation was a timely step deserving respect, the pollster said on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Kazakh society is divided over the country's capital renaming from Astana to Nur-Sultan after the former president.
While 42 percent of the respondents consider the renaming reasonable, 35 percent are negative about it, and 24 percent said that they did not care.
Sixteen percent of the respondents are neutral about power transition to Tokayev, since they believe that Nazarbayev will remain the de facto head of state. Meanwhile, 12 percent of the interviewees said they thought that Nazarbayev had to hold on to power as long as it was possible, and only 4 percent felt that he had to resign a long time ago.
The poll was carried out on March 29-30 among 1,813 Kazakh residents aged 18 and more. The error margin does not exceed 3 percent.
