Kazakhstan President Tokayev accepted the government’s resignation on Wednesday, and his office said that after violent protests triggered by rising fuel prices shook the oil-rich Central Asian country.
Later on Tuesday, police used tear gas and stun grenades to drive hundreds of protesters out of the main square in Almaty, the largest city in the former Soviet Republic. Clashes in the nearby area continued for several hours.
The protests have shaken the image of the former Soviet republic as a politically stable and tightly controlled country-in its three decades of independence, it has used the country to attract hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign investment into its oil and metal industries .
Tokayev declared a state of emergency in Almaty and the oil-producing Mangisto province in the west earlier on Wednesday, and said that domestic and foreign provocateurs were behind the violence.
Protests began in Mangisto province on Sunday, after the price cap on liquefied petroleum gas (a popular automobile fuel) was lifted the day before, the price more than doubled. In a conversation with acting cabinet members on Wednesday, Tokayev ordered them and the governor to restore the price control of liquefied petroleum gas and extend it to gasoline, diesel and other “socially important” consumer products.
He also ordered the government to enact a personal bankruptcy law and consider freezing the prices of public utilities and subsidizing the rents of poor families.
He said that after declaring a state of emergency with curfews and movement restrictions, conditions in towns attacked by protests are improving.
Complete News Source : Hindustan Times
