Almaty embraces new mayor

Until this new nomination, Erbolat Dosaev was head of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, having worked there since 2019.

On January 13, a petition to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev appeared at the otinish.kz website. Residents of Almaty asked the president to discharge Bakytzhan Sagintayev from the office of Almaty mayor. As of January 17, about 25,000 people signed that petition. In the document, people blamed the former mayor for avoiding the public space during the unrest; he didn’t appear in the public until January 8 and did nothing to support people and prop up their morale during those days in early January.

The petition also calls for transparent elections of a new mayor or to appoint as the city’s head a local official, who was born and raised here.

Bakytzhan Saginyayev was born on October 13, 1963. He graduated from the Kazakh State University named after Kirov, Ph.D. in Economics. He used to work as a teacher in the Institute of National Economy in Almaty. In 2016 he was appointed to the office of the prime minister; in February 2019 he was discharged from office. He then worked as state secretary. On June 28, 2019, he became the mayor of Almaty.

Erbolat Dosaev was born on May 21, 1970 in Almaty. After finishing specialized physics and mathematics high school in Almaty, he graduated from Almaty Energy Institute and the Bauman Moscow State Technical University. He used to work as a minister of health, minister of economic development, minister of economy and budget planning, etc.