Blogs of ministers and Akims give false feeling of accessibility: expert

Blogs of Ministers and Akims give a false feeling of accessibility of the authorities, Tengrinews.kz reports citing secretary of Nur Otan party Yerlan Karin. “It is clear that resolving of many critical issues is often impossible without an interaction between citizens and authorities. Many mechanisms that are in place in our country (...) are inefficient. For example, the ministers’ and Akims’ blogs. It seems that they give a feeling of the authorities’ accessibility or the citizen’s opportunity to directly address the officials, but, unfortunately, the final approach is different: it frequently is only a formality. This creates discontent and misunderstanding,” Yerlan Karin said at the state conference of political experts called Current issues of the political science in the context of social modernization of Kazakhstan. According to him, the government has to be ready for a dialog. “It is necessary to build up the mechanisms of direct and open interaction. No concepts of public dialog developed by political experts can be implemented without a political will for cooperation and openness,” the expert said. The conference held in Astana’s National Academic Library was attended by researchers and heads of departments of political science, sociology and humanities of Kazakhstan universities. Nur Otan secretary pointed out that the work of political experts is especially important in the realm of guiding young people away from entertaining extremist ideas. “It is obvious that the students community has to learn the values of the changing society in order to be able to stay firmly away from traditional conservatism or, even worse, searching comforts in different extremist trends. I think that a priority should be given to the political socialization of young people. This is where our political experts could make a significant social impact by raising awareness of the danger of the ideas political and religious extremist and thus, keeping young people away from involvement in different extremist organizations,” Karin stated. By Gulnara Zhandagulova