How I Never Got to See the Minister of National Economy

I have been through all sorts of things in my life, but I honestly don't know what to call what happened today.

About a week ago, the Minister of National Economy's press secretary invited me to meet with him. The initiative came not from us but from the Ministry. Independent economic experts were invited to discuss Strategy 2025 in a small group.

This was the third invitation (twice before, the meeting had been canceled just one day in advance), so I double-checked about this meeting twice. I was given a 100 percent guarantee. This morning, they even asked whether I had arrived for the meeting. I said yes. A day before the meeting, they had sent over the draft of Strategy 2025.

We all arrived at the appointed time and waited at the Ministry. But then something went wrong. Time passed, and we kept waiting. Eventually the press secretary came out, apologized and said that the Minister was busy and could not see us today.

I am not a proud man, but there is such a thing as ordinary business etiquette, as basic human respect, and much else besides. Yet this is not even about etiquette or respect.

If independent experts are really needed, they would have been received. Where there is a will, finding even five minutes to simply meet us and explain the situation is, I think, not difficult at all.

Subconsciously, of course, I suspected the meeting might be canceled, so I combined the trip with other business. Still, my desire to come to such meetings has vanished for good, especially when I pay for them out of my own pocket. I understand that independent experts here are assumed to be well-off people who can afford to fly to Astana for nothing, but these experts have their own work to do, too.

I am a busy man. I have a job, and this is just public engagement. If an expert community is not needed, there is no point in dialogue.

With this approach, we will be building an accountable, transparent government for another two hundred years.

Today I was also supposed to meet a close friend, a doctor and a very well-known cardiac surgeon. His evening meeting with me was canceled too, but not because he wanted to cancel it. A patient with a heart attack was brought in, and he was performing surgery, saving a life. As soon as he came out of the operating room, he called and explained. I have no complaints about him. But whose life was the Minister saving at that moment?

What interests me most is how ministers organize their schedules. Who could have occupied the Minister so completely that he canceled a meeting after the appointed time had already come?

Or is a minister in our country not in control of his own time?

In short, there are many questions and no answers.

For example, if I schedule a meeting and my boss summons me at that moment, I explain that I have a meeting. He understands that I am busy with something important and reschedules. When we met with the Prime Minister, he struck me as a very open and positive person. I don't think he would have summoned the minister if he had been told that the minister was meeting experts who had traveled from another city. So there is only one conclusion: we are not that important and are needed mostly for show. And since I don't want to associate myself with toilet paper, I see no point in going to such meetings at all.

And a few words about the strategy. It is a closed document, so I cannot disclose its content, but I have read it and concluded that it needs a great deal of work. In short, this strategy can be described as a collection of slogans. As soon as it is officially published, I will certainly write about all of the program's shortcomings.