Nevertheless, on March 25 the law was submitted for presidential endorsement. Protests to the restrictive law reached its climax at that point. On April 12 opposition figures, democratically-minded parliament members, independent journalists, leaders of the International Public Foundation for the Protection of Freedom of Speech “Adil Soz”, the International Human Rights Bureau in Kazakhstan, the public foundations “Journalists in Distress” and “Transparency Kazakhstan” and a host of other organizations sent an appeal to president demanding him to veto the new media law in order, as they put it, “to avert a monopolization of the media in any form”. “This law enhances the already unjustifiably inflated power of the state bureaucracy enabling it to restrict the professional activities of journalists and reducing their chance of creating new media” the appeal said.

For their part, members of the Constitutional Council, after scrutinizing the submitted law at their April session, concluded that the new law contradicted the basic principles of civic liberties laid down in the constitution. Article 20, Clause 2 of the Constitution grants the freedom of expression and the right to get and disseminate an information, not prohibited by law, to all individuals, while according to the new media law non-citizens and foreigners are denied such rights. The Constitutional Council also pointed out that the Article 5 of the media law leaves loopholes for abuse of power by local authorities who wish to ban any information they interpret as “harmful to society”. Further, the government version of the media law vests “authorized bodies” with power to revoke the licenses of broadcasting stations or declare their registration certificates invalid, while according to the Constitution only the court is empowered to deprive electronic or print media of licenses.

The Constitutional Court announced that the new media law could not be signed and enacted as it infringes on the constitutional rights of individuals. This decision was welcomed by opposition parties and the international community. Symbolically, the rejection of the unconstitutional media law coincided with the third Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty and produced a positive impression on foreign participants of this traditional international event.

As if by coincidence, shortly before the opening of the Media Forum, at which the President gave a welcoming speech, the district court of Aktobe (West Kazakhstan) announced its decision to release the founder of the independent paper “Diapazon” Vladimir Mikhailov who spent several months in confinement for allegedly being involved in illegal business. It should be mentioned that journalists of the paper were beaten and intimidated prior to the unsubstantiated detention of Vladimir Mikhailov. In the early hours of January 27, according to journalists, policemen broke into the office of the paper and ransacked all the rooms searching for compromising documents. Two days after the incident Viktor Mikhailov got a two years prison term.

Unfortunately, the persecution of the “Diapazon” journalists is not an isolated case. Similar violations of journalists’ rights in Pavlodar and Petropavlovsk have been reported even in papers with government leanings. Although under the present law journalists have a sufficient degree of freedom, administrative power and financial strains put a strait-jacket on their creative activities. All Soviet-era regional papers in Kazakh and Russian have become nothing more than a personal mouthpiece of the local governor. They are financed by local governments who place the so-called state orders to promote official ideology.

It is not a real pleasure for people to read papers which in every issue carry front-page pictures of akims (governors) and parrot their sugar-coated speeches. But for regional papers, that is the only way of surviving. Company-owned papers have no better luck either. They are entirely dependent on their financial backers. Owners of the papers can fire a journalist on a whim. Monopolization of the press deeply erodes public confidence in journalistic integrity. A recent public opinion poll showed that only 30% of the population trusts the printed word.

The presidential veto of the unpopular Media Law was intended, as it is speculated in various circles, to create a favorable image of the leadership as a committed guardian of democratic reforms in Kazakhstan. Under growing pressure from opposition as well as from the international community, the government feels whipped up to soften its media policy. The rejection of the media law can be seen as a part of this political maneuvering. Although the decision of the President was officially hailed by the US State Department, the government has still to prove that it really deserves that praise.