ALMATY, MAY 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — A new information ministry announced last week by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will likely act as a censor and increase government control over the media, journalists and analysts said.

Mr Nazarbayev announced the Soviet-sounding ministry of information at the same time as he said that planned reforms to the land code would be postponed after they sparked a series of protests across the country.

He blamed a lack of public information about the reforms for the protests and said the new ministry would ease the flow of information from government to the people.

Political analyst Aidos Sarym said he thought that Mr Nazarbayev had been genuinely concerned his land reforms plans had been misunderstood.

“Authorities think that protests are just lack of communication. They think that if they will explain ‘properly’ to people, people will take it,” he said. “Nazarbayev understands that he lost his connection to the majority of population.”

But in an opinion piece on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Russian language website, reporter Svetlana Glushkova said that the government would try to use the new ministry to control social media, one of the few places where some form of free speech still exists in Kazakhstan, more tightly.

“I think the new ministry will increase control over social media, at first. Now you cannot see it [free speech] in TV or newspapers so the real resentment of the people, you will find it only on social media. The truth is there,” she said.

Kuralay Abylgazina, a journalist for a local news agency, agreed. She told the Bulletin that protests against the land reforms had worried the government.

“As of now, the ministry will most likely control content only from government media, but in future it will initiate some laws to regulate press freedom in the country,” she said. “And then we will see if this new government organ is a ministry of censorship.”