Famous Kazakh political observer, Mr. Dasym Satpayev is convinced that the negative selection in the public service sector has won. He gives persuading arguments to prove that crises and tragedies, in the eyes of the public servants, are beachheads for further growth and instruments of political struggle – not situations they must prevent. The best proof to that is the fact that in the last 30 years, governmental officials never demonstrated the timely and effective reaction to emergencies, not to mention early forecasting of same.

Literal translation below:

“In 2020, we ran a public poll among various experts to reveal the main reasons why there was the managerial chaos in the public service sector, particularly in the times of the Covid pandemic. Answering the question “What were the main reasons why public service bodies showed no effectivity in combating the coronavirus epidemy in Kazakhstan?”, most of those experts indicated “crisis of competences at all levels of public service sector”, as the main reason.

In the last 30 years, there was not a single case, when our public servants would show the prompt and the professional response to any crisis,

let that be breaking of a dam, mud-flood from mountains, pandemic, industrial accidents and growing scarcity of water.

Another round of that “competences crisis” was observed during the last big fire, when people were killed.  I would like to express condolences to all relatives and friends of the victims. 

But the last 30 years, we have seen numerous deaths, caused by corruption, negligence, and lack of effectivity of central and local public authorities.

Moreover, there was not a single case, when central and local governments were ready to face various crises, not to say were able to forecast them. They all waited for the “frost to thaw”.

Besides, the communicational deafness and managerial short-sightedness of our officials made them not want to listen to experts, which experts had many times warned them about certain risks the country was to face.

All above is because of the negative selection, when loyalty is far more important, than professionalism

That explains the “syndrome of the timeserver” and “short memory trap”, according to which our rulers would always start things from scratch, without drawing conclusions from previous tragedies. All that resulted in the short planning horizon and unwillingness to be the “bad news messenger” in the eyes of those above, which attitudes would result in the information distortion. 

In the course of the above-mentioned public poll, we also revealed that experts think that the third most important reason behind the lack of effective management in the public sector was the “collective irresponsibility”.

Our officials, at all levels, are not willing to assume responsibility for anti-crises decisions. The most awful thing is that officials would often use crises not to improve their anti-crises affectivity, but to perform re-shuffling and resources re-distribution.

That is why, small wonder, that experts we interviewed indicated “lack of effectively operating political institutions (parliaments, both central and local, political parties and local self-rule bodies)”, as the second main reason for poor performance of the governmental structures.

Without strong political institutions, opposition, without transparency of process of governmental budgets appropriation, independent Mass Media and other things that constitute important elements of democratic control, we will remain hostages to ineffective government with its old diseases. Which means, that individual dismissals shall not resolve the problem, which is deeply rooted.  Roots are in the system of public service itself”.