ASTANA -- The Kazakh parliament's upper chamber, the Senate, has approved a motion to annul a state holiday instituted in honor of the country's first president, Nursultan Nazarbaev.
The bill to scrap the Day of the First President, observed on December 1, is the latest move by President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev in his apparent efforts to distance himself from his predecessor.
The Day of the First President was first marked as a state holiday in 2012.
The bill, which was approved by the lower chamber, the Mazhilis, in early September, will take effect after Toqaev signs it into law.
The Senate's approval of the bill comes three days after Toqaev's decree to change the name of Kazakhstan's capital city back to Astana from Nur-Sultan came into force.
SEE ALSO: Kazakh President Signs Legislation Changing Presidential Term, Name Of CapitalToqaev first changed the name of the capital from Astana to Nur-Sultan to honor Nazarbaev in 2019, one day after Nazarbaev, who had run the tightly controlled former Soviet republic with an iron fist for almost three decades, announced he was resigning and that Toqaev was his handpicked successor.
Though he officially stepped down as president, Nazarbaev retained sweeping powers as the head of the country's powerful Security Council. He also enjoyed substantial powers by holding the title of "elbasy," or leader of the nation.
Even after Nazarbaev stepped down, many Kazakhs remained bitter about the oppression felt during his reign.
Those feelings came to a head in January when unprecedented, nationwide anti-government protests started over a fuel-price hike, and then exploded into deadly unrest over perceived corruption under the Nazarbaev regime and the cronyism that allowed his family and close friends to enrich themselves while ordinary citizens failed to enjoy any of the oil-rich Central Asian nation's wealth.
Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of his Security Council role, taking it over himself. Since then, several of Nazarbaev's relatives and allies have been pushed out of their positions or resigned. Some have been arrested on corruption charges.
In June, a Toqaev-initiated referendum removed Nazarbaev's name from the constitution and annulled his status as elbasy.
Kazakh critics say Toqaev's initiatives are mainly cosmetic and have not changed the nature of the autocratic system in a country that has been plagued for years by rampant corruption and nepotism.