After 30 years in power, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has resigned

"I made the decision to give up the presidential term", Nazarbayev, 78, said in a message broadcast on television.

Sitting in his presidential office, Nazarbayev, whose current mandate the presidential election expired in April 2020, He recalled that in July, he would be in office for 30 years.

Nazarbayev will however have extended its powers after his departure from the presidency thanks to a law pbaded in 2018 and its status as "father of the nation", which guarantees judicial immunity and an influential role.

Starting tomorrow Tuesday, the leader of Central Asia will continue to occupy the post of chief of the Security Council of the republic, an advisory body and Senate Speaker Kazim-Zhomart Tokyev will temporarily badume the presidency.

Nazarbayev, 78, came to the presidency of the country while Kazakhstan was still a Soviet republicin 1989, then first secretary of the Communist Party.

Since then, he has retained the power after independence, in 1991. He was re-elected several times by absolute majority and he never clearly designated his successor. His last victory was in 2015 with 97% of the vote, although the elections in the country are neither competitive nor transparent.

The announcement comes less than a month after the brutal dismissal of the Kazakh government by Nazarbayevwhich made him responsible for the bad economic results.

The president then promised social measures in billions of dollars to respond to growing public discontentless than a year before the next presidential election.

Nazarbayev, who will also continue to lead the official Nur Otan party, he is the most respected leader of all post-Soviet space, Since then, he has transformed his country, rich in oil and minerals, into one of the economic locomotives of the region.

While maintaining good relations with the Russian governmenthas developed close cooperation with Western countries, which are very interested in the enormous energy resources of the country bathed in the Caspian Sea, as well as in China.

Kazakhstan is also headquarters of the Baikonur Cosmodrome of the Russian Aerospace Agency Roscosmos, the only place in the world from which astronauts are sent into space and the International Space Station (ISS), after the cancellation of the US shuttle program in 2011.

With information from AFP and EFE