At the founding congress of the opposition movement "For a Just Kazakhstan" in March 2005, the opposition parties and leaders present selected Tuyakbay as their candidate to contest the presidential election. The opposition leaders at the meeting also paid tribute to Kazhegeldin--who was reported to be funding the new movement from exile--and to Zhakiyanov, who was portrayed as the symbol of the opposition, the outcast martyr, suffering for his convictions.[26] However, the fact that the opposition includes such formerly influential figures, all of whom entertain their own ambitions for the "top job," has also tended to lead to infighting. The various opposition movements have repeatedly split into competing factions and the coalition "For a Just Kazakhstan" is a precarious one.[27]

For Family and Friends

As in Russia and other post-Soviet states, the opposition to Nazarbayev may be fractious, but it is genuine, and it is also complicated by its links to the Nazarbayev "family" and political "clan."Â References to the Nazarbayev family (his actual immediate and extended family) are usually the issue that raise the most direct comparisons with the other Central Asian states--especially Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, where presidential family members have been active in politics and business. In Kyrgyzstan, the corruption and venality of President Askar Akayev's family, and his coterie's attempts to manipulate the 2004 parliamentary elections with a view to enabling Akayev to stay in power longer than the constitution permitted, were the main triggering events for the protest and eventual overthrow of the government.