Kazakh leader rejects MPs’ request to rename capital in his honor

By RIA Novosti,

Astana : Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has rejected a motion signed by 80 members of parliament requesting that the country’s capital, Astana, be renamed Nursultan in his honor.

---

Support TwoCircles

---

Lawmakers signed the request on Wednesday.

“I have always been against such renamings, all the more so since they [lawmakers] want to name it after me,” Nazarbayev told reporters on Friday.

Astana, meaning ‘capital city,’ was given its name after taking over as Kazakhstan’s capital from Almaty in 1997.

Nazarbayev has ruled the Central Asian state for 19 years, as first secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party from 1989, and since the breakup of the Soviet Union as president of Kazakhstan.