“Strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory. Tactics without strategy is only a noise before a defeat “
The Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu

In mid-January 2021, Karagusova Gulzhana Dzhanpeisovna resigned from her post as chairwoman of the Finance and Budget Commitee for the Mazhilis of Kazakhstan’s Parliament. World Monitor’s editorial staff met with Gulzhana Dzhanpeisovna in her new role, one in which her vast experience in public service is behind her, having held various chairwomanships, and of course, always offering a unique, honest and indisputable view of the situation in the country and in the world. This interview took place in an online format, which has been a novelty for the heroine herself and for our editorial staff. We hope very much that in the near future we shall smoothly move to the former and so familiar-to-us mode of personal meetings.

Gulzhana Dzhanpeisovna, after so many years of work, please, share the results of your activities. Which have pushed you out of your comfort zone to defend your point of view in front of fellow Mazhilismen?

In total, I have 20 years working in civil service in parliament. I have worked for four and a half years in the Senate and 15 years in the Mazhilis. All these years in the Mazhilis, I have served as the chairwoman of the Finance and Budget Committee. I can say that every second bill has forced people to leave their comfort zone. Because the committee itself is a key and, of course, some interests are always contiguous to each other. Very often, questions have arisen about amendments that, for one reason or another, should not have been amended in the bills, and often it has been necessary to settle various disputes and disagreements. It has been very difficult to work with the government, especially with issues related to the tax code. It has always been very difficult to deal with taxes. Yes, and now the system needs a clear organizational structure in this area, otherwise there will be no efficiency from the reforms.

What do you think about the discharge of the IIT payment when it is about withdrawing pension savings? Many people today are interested in the ethics of this. At the moment, the state proposes the payment of the individual income tax on payments that have already been made from wages. Is that to say a tax imposed on savings earned by citizens?

I understand the citizen’s concern about this issue. And I know that this issue has been discussed for a very long time with difficultly at the state level. At the proper time, when I was the Minister (from 2001 to 2007 – the Minister of Labor and Social Protection of the Population of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Ed.), we proposed such amendments, but we had a clear understanding that the state was obliged to provide people with a guarantee that, taking into account the average inflation, their savings would remain intact. There had to be a certain green line, giving citizens the guarantee that nothing would happen to their savings. The state is obliged to provide guarantees for the safety of savings.

The fact that the IIT has now been imposed on pension savings, I think that it is not entirely correct.
FOOTNOTE: One of the participants in the video interview has shared his experience regarding the issue of IIT on pension savings in Germany. The country’s population filed a lawsuit against the Constitutional Court, which had ruled that pension savings should not have been taxed twice. It also spelled out that only the amount of investment income would be taxed.

What do you think the people of the Republic of Kazakhstan can do in such a situation? Is there a tool that can be used to overturn the new regulation?

One or several Kazakhstanis are unlikely to be able to do something, but if common interests are represented by various associations that not only explains the ‘awkwardness’ of the resolution, but also defends the interests of citizens, then this issue may be revised. There is also an important point in this decree. Does this regulation apply to everyone? Or only for those who withdraw their pension savings now, at this time? And as far as I know, there is no open answer to date. The state should always provide a clear answer and clear position regarding what it offers to its citizens.

What do you think about the fact that every day more and more women are at the helm in the largest Kazakhstani companies and in the country’s government? Do you think this is a good sign of a transition to more conscious and wiser management? How do you feel about the growing trend of #girlpower?

I believe that a specialist should be considered without reference to gender. But throughout all 49 years of my professional activity, this trend, as you say, has been difficult to follow. Any positions a woman occupies, she always had to carefully prepare arguments to substantiate one or another one of her ideas or proposals. Yet there is no such a thing in the male world and never has been. Now the situation has begun to change a little bit, but there is a very important point here. I would not welcome a situation in which the positions of the male and female worlds were equal. I tend to assess, first of all, the professionalism and qualifications of a specialist. On the other hand, a real woman with all her genetic disposition, intuition and a woman’s attitude, always strives for peace. In any situation, in any environment, she will always find the most effective way. And this is good news, because a woman is always strategic. A man is pure tactics. As the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest path to victory. Tactics without strategy is only a noise before a defeat. “

Another issue that is on the agenda is that not all women today have the qualities of a real woman, combining both a woman-girl, a woman-mother, a woman-friend, and a woman-keeper of the hearth, etc. Many women, having enlisted purely masculine qualities of a tactician, today want to achieve, win, and ensure a bright, dignified, successful life for themselves. And this is a different woman.

How do you think the situation with the flow of #girlpower will develop in Kazakhstan? Will we be able to strike a balance between professional male tacticians and female strategists?

You know, that in parliament this situation has already begun to change, 30% of quotas (an international standard – an editor’s note) for women are already in effect. Really, women today get more space for implementing social projects, whereas, in my opinion, they would be much more effective in solving financial issues and issues of long-term planning and budgeting.

How did you manage to maneuver between the high, key position held, which can be safely called strategic, and your personal/family life? Are there any rules for building a career and personal life?

There have never been any rules as such. But there have been strict requirements for myself. My mom raised me to be an excellent student. Therefore, I have done everything in my life perfectly. If you are not about to do something well, there is no need to take it on. Plus, luck has to be acknowledged. It has had its place. As I have said many times, I became a doctor because they were paid well. In the Soviet Union, being the head of a department was the ultimate dream! After the Soviet Union’s collapse, to the professor began to earn only pennies, so I went to where they paid real money. And already here it is necessary to note the will of a chance. Still, sometimes you need to be in the right place at the right time. After the invitation of Nursultan Abishevich Nazarbayev to the post of Assistant to the President, a colossal responsibility was given to me. And I thank the Almighty for the fact that I have never let down, did not violate, the high trust placed on me. And my children have been brought up by my personal example. As a minister, I have brought my daughter with me everywhere, we have traveled all over Kazakhstan. And she saw with her own eyes how people lived, heard them, observed their life. After all, serving people is based on the ability to hear their needs, to hear their voice, because it is important for every person to be heard. Today, looking back, I cannot imagine how I managed to combine all this, but I am infinitely grateful to all those who have been around. Especially to my mom, of course.

Today, there is a lot of discussion about the use of innovations of the fourth industrial revolution and even more talk about the benefits that they promise a person. In your opinion, is this so “good” for a person – all these innovations and technological developments, and what we do not notice now or cannot yet notice? Do you think it is worth taking care of developing international standards and agreements today that will help to protect us from the harmful effects of technology?

I am sure that digital technologies are good. But! We have lost our strategy again. Why did we create it? Any industrial revolution occurs to increase labor productivity, increase production efficiency and the quality of those products. In order to make a person live progressively better, be healthier and more educated. That is to say, in theory, digital technologies are simply a means. But the trend not only in our state but throughout the world is that digital technologies have become the goal. And when the means turn into the end, we – the people – may become slaves to this end. This is the same with money – ideally it’s a means to achieve some good – has turned into an end itself, making us into its slaves. And it happens everywhere.

It becomes especially scary for children who are now on distance learning throughout the country. And what kind of the learning can there be when there is no direct contact between the teacher and the child? In studying, this is paramount! Reading real printed books and writing by a hand is the key to learning! Because when a child writes, all three factors of mental activity work for him at once. If we lose all of that, we may lose future generations. Because in the hands of a digital puppeteer, living children turn out to be puppets.

Healthcare and education should be free and publicly available, then a person has a different value for the state. In this case, a person receives education which then returns for him through working in the system, his health and healthcare are built on preventive medicine, since it is important that a person is healthy and productive.

What do you think about social media? Do you see it as a threat to personal security and loss of privacy? Facebook, Youtube, Twitter have repeatedly been accused of transferring information about their users to third parties. The whole world has witnessed an unprecedented event – the President of the United States has been blocked on Facebook, Youtube and Twitter, in fact, erasing his existence from the digital world. In your opinion, how safe and unsafe is it now to be on social media at the same time?

In my opinion, social media is a waste of time. I am against being online. I believe that a working and thinking person has nothing to do there! The scary thing is that no one in this world is responsible for anything. So much dirt and lewdness is poured there every day, and people absorb it. There are no rules, no boundaries… Say what you want, about who you want and when you want. I believe that there should be accountability for what those whose voice has weight broadcasted from their pages. I am guided by the following principle: “Before you say something, pass it through three sieves: first, is it true or not (check the source); second, what harm can this cause to others; and third, what are the consequences?” And if what you are about to say has not passed all three sieves, why do you even go to open your mouth?

Representatives of the World Economic Forum, led by their executive chairman Klaus Schwab, talk about the Great Reset and its basic, quite prosaic principles – fairness, transparency, accountability… It seems there is nothing wrong with these principles, but if you take a closer look at the agenda, you can see the trend towards global control. What do you think, do we exaggerate or is it time for humanity to think about who today decides on which path we should develop further?

In my opinion, this can perfectly transport us into the world of George Orwell’s dreamy dystopia 1984. If you haven’t read it, be sure to read it. There is a possibility that they slowly prepare us for that.

I literally believe that all these programs of the World Economic Forum, together with its ideologies, have gone far beyond reasonable limits. Having become a ‘monolith’, they have stopped developing, because the monolith does not develop, but only degrades. Their idea of total control and ruling all over the whole world will fail. Because more and more people every day realize their freedom. And in awareness, a person can no longer be a weak-willed slave and executor of someone else’s will.

What do you think about the idea of creating the CommonPass, a global passport included in the idea of the Great Reboot, to travel around the world and even along the streets of your own cities? And also the concepts of GenRich and GenPoor that follow from that?

I believe in the Almighty. And after all, those who promote all of that to the masses, they are also believers! And the Almighty has created each person already unique and special, unique and perfect. And each person comes to earth with his/her mission. Now tell me – who has given them the right to play the role of God and what kind of democracy is this if I can only move where boundaries are outlined for me? Democracy is about creating equal opportunities for everyone! And where is it in the idea of creating the CommonPass?

A lot was said last year about the pandemic and its impact on the entire population of the earth. In particular, I would like to note the information field that has been created around it. In your opinion, could the situation with COVID-19 have gone according to a different scenario, if there was a different strategy for informing the population? There is a perception that this whole situation has been the beginning of a well-planned PR-action.

I absolutely agree with you. In my opinion, the coronavirus is the beginning of the very ‘great reset’ that has been so much talked about over the past few years. They have scared to death the entire population of the Earth, and then slowly, systematically they have taken away normal life from them. Here and there, people have begun to get sick from fear, having no contact with the infected ones or any circumstances in which the disease would be possible. They have been simply held by fear. And the fear destroys DNA. And everyone knows that!

And I believe that the strategy of informing the population could not have been, but should have been different!

Are you planning to get vaccinated against COVID-19?

Most likely, I will be vaccinated. Because I really want to go to my grandchildren. I really want to visit friends who are scattered across the world. And, given my age, to sit and be afraid of a terrible virus – I simply do not have time.

Gulzhana Dzhanpeisovna, what would you like to achieve professionally? What are your plans for the next 10-15 years?

I would like to finish reading all the lectures professionally and return my profession to the place where it should be. Paul Fregerson said in 1876: “All sorts of analysts and forecasters get multiplied, and these ones are just linguistic rattles, because the basic requirements, which are at least 2000 years old, are not met… This is analysis, synthesis, monitoring, benefit.” Who is an analyst? The one who should analyze and offer you the most effective ways to solve a problem for which this analysis was made.

That is why I want to combine all the knowledge gained in my entire life from all the great teachers whom I have met on my way, to combine the accumulated experience and to transfer it to these who really want to master this profession. And in that, today, I see my role.