Is Kazakhstan capable of transitioning to democracy?

In the dramatic ‘reveal’ of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, the lead character, private dick Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) violently extracts the identity of the young girl hidden in the house of Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway). Evelyn, after being beaten and thrown across the room by Gittes, explains, ‘She’s my sister and my daughter’. The penny drops and Gittes realises that Evelyn has had a daughter by her father.

Incest is shocking enough in a film. When incest allegedly involves Nursultan Nazarbayev, the former president of Kazakhstan, and his daughter Dariga, the speaker of Kazakhstan’s Senate, the revelation is jaw-dropping.

The reveal of this hard-to-believe accusation was even more extraordinary. It was posted on Facebook by Aisultan Nazarbayev, the president’s grandson, who in February 2020 sought political asylum in Britain: ‘My mother [Dariga] kept my grandfather on the hook because I am his son.’ Other Facebook posts by Aisultan include rather less surprising charges of high-level corruption.