0
ALMATY: President Nursultan Nazarbayev's son-in-law would take power if the head of state had to step down, a top official said Monday, in the first official hint of a successor to the Kazakh strongman.
Timur Kulibayev, the head of the giant Kazakh holding company Samruk-Kazyna and husband of Nazarbayev's middle daughter Dinara, would take over if the president suddenly left power, his top advisor Yermukhamet Yertysbayev said.
His comments in an interview with Russia's Kommersant newspaper come after Nazarbayev this month disappeared for what officials described as a holiday but Germany's Bild newspaper said was hospitalisation for prostate surgery.
“It is Kulibayev who would be able to continue the president's strategic course, in the case of an extraordinary situation connected with the sudden departure of the head of state,” Yertysbayev told Kommersant.
The president's absence - which ended on Thursday when he re-emerged to chair an official meeting in Astana - caused jitters among investors in the energy-rich state worried about the uncertainty over the succession issue.
Nazarbayev came to power while Kazakhstan was still a Soviet republic and was elected president after it won independence. Along with Uzbek President Islam Karimov, he is the longest serving leader in the former USSR.
