Kulibayev would succeed Nazarbayev if needed - Yertysbayev

    Timur Kulibayev, the powerful son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, could succeed the aging leader, Nazarbayev’s confidant Yermukhamet Yertysbayev told a Russian newspaper.
    “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,” Yertysbayev told the Kommersant business daily.
    While Kulibayev’s name has for long dominated the short list of Nazarbayev’s possible successors, Yertysbayev’s comments represented a rare hint at succession from the tight circle surrounding Nazarbayev.
    Yertysbayev is reportedly very close to the Kazakh leader and has been known to act as an unofficial spokesman for Nazarbayev himself.
    Kulibayev, on his part, publicly distanced himself from Yertysbayev’s comments, saying that he was interested in business not politics.
    “Honestly, for me this statement came as a complete surprise. I have never positioned myself as a politician,” the Kazakhstan-Novosti news agency quoted him as saying.
    Despite his denials, Kulibayev is one of Kazakhstan’s most powerful leaders. He controls a vast empire of personal business interests and heads the country’s state-owned holding and investment company Samruk-Kazyna which generates more than half of Kazakhstan’s GDP.
    In his interview to Kommersant, Yertysbayev also said that Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim Masimov had no ambition to run for president, as suggested in a recent public statement by Kazakh fugitive banker Mukhtar Ablyazov.
    “I perfectly well know that [Masimov] doesn’t even think about aspiring to the role of the first person,” Yertysbayev said. “”Mukhtar Ablyazov indulges in wishful thinking and is trying to create strife between the elite.
    The succession guessing game, the favorite pastime of Kazakhstan observers, has become a hot issue last week, following the alleged hospitalization of Nazarbayev at a clinic in Germany, SRI said.