Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev has abruptly announced his resignation, 29 years after taking office.
In a televised address on Tuesday, the 78-year-old said he has taken the “difficult” decision to terminate his authority as president, but did not give a specific reason for the shock decision.
“I have decided to end my duties as president,” Nazarbayev said, before signing a decree terminating his powers effective March 30.
“This year I will have held the highest post for 30 years,” he said. “As the founder of the independent Kazakh state I see my task now in facilitating the rise of a new generation of leaders who will continue the reforms that are under way in the country.”
Nazarbayev, who was elected for a fifth-five year term in 2015, said speaker of the Central Asian country’s upper house, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, will serve as the interim head of state until a new election is held.
The announcement came less than a month after Nazarbayev sacked his government, citing a lack of economic development despite the country’s vast energy resources.
That decision followed rising dissatisfaction in Kazakhstan, whose commodity-dependent economy has struggled to recover from a 2014 plunge in oil prices and Western sanctions against Russia, a key trading partner.
Nazarbayev subsequently named 53-year-old Askar Mamin as the new prime minister and announced a major spending plan on social programmes and state salaries.
Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament and a close ally of the country’s President Vladimir Putin, said Nazarbayev’s resignation was unexpected and very serious, RIA news agency reported.
Meanwhile, in his address, Nazarbayev said he will continue as leader of the ruling Nur Otan party and will remain as chairman of the country’s security council, a move that could allow him to retain key powers.
Nazarbayev has led oil-rich Kazakhstan since 1989, when it was still part of the Soviet Union. He came to power as the country’s Communist Party chief and was then elected president in 1991 weeks before the Soviet collapse.
Since then, he has extended his tenure by landslide victories in successive elections and plebiscites. In the 2015 election, he took nearly 98 percent of the vote.
Nazarbayev has been widely hailed for maintaining stability and ethnic peace in Kazakhstan but has faced criticism over allegations of suppressing dissent and sidelining the opposition.
Radio Free Europe said Nazarbayev’s resignation followed “unusually persistent protests in which demonstrators in several cities across the country of some 18.7 million have accused the government of ignoring the needs and demands of ordinary people”.
