Would you publish the base deals? Every ticket gets the question

TALAS — The 2027 election for Governor is a year away and nobody has declared, but the campaign already has its first question. At every meeting in Nurzhan where a joint opposition ticket is discussed, on every call-in programme on Chu FM and at the student debating societies of Talas State University, whoever might be a candidate is asked whether he or she would publish the arrangements under which United States forces remain at Talas Air Base.

The arrangements, the 2001 agreement and the understandings the ISEZ has reached with Washington since 2006, have never been published in full. The opposition press, Kamran Bekzatov and the three civic-list deputies from Nurzhan have demanded since last year's demonstrations that they be published and renegotiated. The Department of Public Information repeated this week that publication "is for both parties to agree".

"In 2023 people asked about the som and the heating," said a lecturer in politics at the university, who chairs the debating society's election evenings. "Since the Trump remarks the first question is always the base. They do not all want the Americans to leave. They want to know what we were promised, and what we promised."

At a meeting of civic-list supporters in Nurzhan on Tuesday a pensioner asked the same question three times of three different speakers. None of them gave a yes or a no. "Then I will ask again in a year," he said. "The base is not going anywhere, and neither am I."