Labor Party of Irad
The Labor Party of Irad (Iradi: Irad Emgek Partiyası; Russian: Trudovaya partiya Irada) was a political party based in Nurzhan that represented the city's mainly Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking industrial workforce. Founded in 1993 by former members of the Communist Party of Irad and leaders of the refinery, railway and machine-plant unions, it controlled the Nurzhan city council for most of the territorial period and was the Democratic Party of Irad's main opponent in the Territorial Legislature. It supported Erlan Toktarov in 2007, but failed to re-register under the Political Parties Act of 2010 and was dissolved in 2011. Its former deputies now sit as Russo-aligned independents (see Russos of Nurzhan).[1]
History
Foundation (1993)
The Communist Party of Irad ceased to function with the surrender of the Socialist Republic of Irad in August 1992 and was never reconstituted, and the interim US administration took its buildings and records into custody. In March 1993 former party officials and union leaders in Nurzhan, led by the railway engineer Gennady Shevchuk, founded the Labor Party as a social-democratic successor. Its program called for the pensions and housing of Soviet-era industrial workers, Russian-language schooling, continued public ownership of Iradneft and the Nurzhan refinery, and closer economic ties with Kazakhstan and Russia. It opposed the currency board that fixed the som to the dollar.[1]
Territorial period (1993–2006)
Labor won a majority on the Nurzhan city council in the first municipal elections in November 1993 and held it, alone or with allied lists, until 2007. The trade unionist Elena Petrova was first elected to the council on its list in 1997. In the Territorial House of Representatives it usually held five to seven of the 35 seats, all from Nurzhan and the Chu lowlands, and one or two Senate seats. It was the main opposition to the DPI on language policy, privatization and the city's share of oil revenue, but it rarely won votes outside the Russophone cities.[1][2]
2007 and the ISEZ
When Toktarov proclaimed the Irad Special Economic Zone from Nurzhan on 25 February 2007, the Labor-led city council placed the municipal police at his disposal, and the party's deputies supported the emergency administration. Analysts attribute the decision to the party's hostility to the Democratic Republic of Irad's privatization of Iradneft assets and to fear of the clan militias. Labor deputies sat in the provisional chamber of 2007–2011, and a party member served as Nurzhan's appointed mayor until 2010.[2]
Dissolution (2010–2011)
In 2010 the provisional chamber passed the Political Parties Act, which required a registered party to have at least 10,000 members, including at least 500 in each of the eight legislative constituencies. Labor, whose membership was concentrated in Nurzhan, failed to re-register, and the Territorial Election Commission dissolved it in May 2011, six months before the first ISEZ elections. Its deputies and councillors have since stood on civic lists in Nurzhan, which since 2011 have been funded largely by businessmen linked to NurGaz and its president, Kamran Bekzatov. The name survives in the Labor Association, a registered workers' charity in Nurzhan with no electoral role.[2][3]
Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have cited the 2010 Act as one reason why the ISEZ's elections lack meaningful choice: no party other than the DPI has met its thresholds since 2011.[3]
See also
References
- ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2021). 'Russos in Municipal Politics: Nurzhan since 1992.' Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 77–96.
- ^ Abdyldaev, Nurlan (2015). Two Wars for Talas: Armed Forces and Politics in Irad, 1992–2007. Talas: Talas State University Press, pp. 211–264.
- ^ OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (2012). Election Assessment Report: Gubernatorial and Legislative Elections in the ISEZ, 8 November 2011. Warsaw.