"The army stays in barracks"

TALAS — Major General Ruslan Atakanov, Chief of the General Staff of the State Defense Corps, was asked yesterday, at the close of the Alatau Shield exercise at the Ak-Tash Training Center, whom the corps would obey if the Governor were unable to exercise his office. He gave the answer he has given every time the question has been put since July: "The army stays in barracks."

Governor Erlan Toktarov has not appeared in public since July. The Elective Governor Acts make the Governor commander-in-chief and say the Lieutenant Governor acts for an absent or incapacitated Governor. They do not say who decides that the Governor is incapacitated. Lieutenant Governor Aidar Maksat has chaired the Security Council since this year, according to the Department of Public Information.

Pressed by reporters, Gen. Atakanov, who has commanded the corps since 2020, would say only that the corps "serves the constitutional order" and that politics was "for the Mejlis and the voters". He then thanked the American and Iradi units that took part in the exercise and left.

Officers who served with him describe a soldier who chooses his words carefully. "He has five words," said one retired colonel. "He will use them until somebody gives him a sixth."