Government were warned about emergency risks in spring.
The Ekibastuz frost emergency occupied the whole attention of the information space. Even President’s speech at the ceremony of his inauguration, in the course of which he discussed the way the country would take, was left outside the scope of discussions in social networks. There were some individual posts from political observers and public activists, both positive and negative, but they did not kerfuffle much. Kerfuffle was all about Ekibastuz and failure of its heating distribution network.
ALEM RESEARCH analytics showed that in two day and as of the morning of 29 November, 2022, there were 7,000 mentions of that disaster in Mass Media and social networks. There were dozens of posts, hundreds of re-posts and thousands of comments.
Some statistics – 7, 142 mentioned, our of which number 355 were positive, 695 — negative, 6,087 — neutral and 5 – of undefined character.
Old New Kazakhstan …
If to disregard live streams broadcasted by Ekibastuz residents in social networks, as well as open hype sought by the so-called “public opinion leaders”, it appears, according to ALEM RESEARCH, that the information space became an instrumental for another round of discreditation of the regime in office, and that was caused by the information vacuum created by the public servants, themselves.
A monitoring exercise showed that, compared to social networks, Mass Media were way more passive in covering the Ekibastuz emergency. Of course, such an order of things is pretty much habitual for any more or less resonating topic, but unless a major emergency is discussed. In September, for example, when forests in the Kostanay Region were on fire, the difference between the volume of coverage in Mass Media and social networks was under 1,500. But then, the emergency had no direct impact on the town and region authorities.
In social networks, some of the press workers reported that they anticipated reaction from official bodies the whole night. Later, a press liaison official of the Ekibastuz town administration reported that the delay was caused by the absence of the head of regional press-service, with whom they had to endorse the contents of the press-release.
That is why, Mass Media had to rely on real-time live reports from Ekibastuz residents.
The official information came much later and was deprived of details. The formulations were in the spirit of the Old Kazakhstan – “obsolete networks”, “things under control”, “relief in progress” etc. Social networks pointed out that first official messages only appeared when local authorities were in position to report first relief successes.
Information vacuum was filled in with panicking messages from other regions, because worn-out heat distribution networks are a universal problem in the country, with hype around rather convincing fakes, and with sarcasm about the New Kazakhstan with old habits and customs, particularly the practice of prior endorsement of information release by local governments.
That Is Not a Hearing State …
The ALEM RESEARCH monitoring exercise exposed a far greater problem, than the “innocent custom” of artificial limitation of information with the purpose to save the external outlooks of governmental officials. Suddenly, posts and videos came into existence, judging by which it appears that public activists had warned Ekibastuz leadership about the possible disaster long prior. They described technical problems at the local Heat Power Plant, and actively tried to persuade the Premier and the Minister of Energy to deploy a commission to the town, for that commission to see for itself that the town was at the edge of the heat deprivation.
The Government did not hear. The emergency did happen, just like those activists warned. That did not encourage masses to show confidence in government, and social networks collectively produced a question – Is It At All a Hearing State
Now, we have a question – why those were public activists and not the local government. Of course, we may suppose that the Akim did his best without attracting too much attention to his humble work, but something, obviously, went wrong.
One of the former Ekibastuz Mayors – Nurzhan Ashimbetov (2018-2019) reported that one week prior to the emergency itself, town residents witnessed vapor geysers breaking through asphalt all over the town, but that did not bother anybody.
As for the reaction of the central Government, Premier Smailov, at one of the executive meetings, only dedicated 5 minutes to the topic. Something like “this is the beginning of winter, but we have a failure already…Please take steps to relief, and do so in the shortest time…Other local governments, please check all networks and agree with owners of heat generation facilities for them to take the proper action…And keep it all under control…” . Nothing was said about personal responsibility.
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