Kazakhstan is gearing up for a snap presidential vote on April 3, announced only one month ago and scheduled almost two years ahead of the originally planned 2012 election. There has been speculation whether president Nursuntan Nazarbayev’s decision to hold early polls was related to the Egyptian protests that gripped the country trying to overthrow Hosni Mubarak as well as the general unrest throughout the Middle East earlier this year. Nazarbayev is the current incumbent who has been in office for more than 20 years – a rare example of concentrating power in one individual for such a long time even by post-Soviet standards rivaled only by Uzbek President Islam Karimov. See my previous post about the politics behind the snap poll in Kazakhstan.
The official presidential election campaign started on Thursday, March 3 and will last until 11:59 pm on April 1. Beginning April 2, no campaigning is allowed in order to let the voters make up their mind in peace. There are three challengers in the race, although all three openly support the incumbent president. They are Zhambyl Akhmetbekov of the pro-Nazarbaev Communist People’s Party; Mels Eleusizov, leader of the Tabighat (Nature) ecological union; and Patriots Party leader Ghani Kasymov.
With the campaign spending cap around half a billion Kazakh tenge ($3.4 million), the three have complained about the lack of funds to conduct it. Each candidate had to collect 91,000 signatures in support of his candidacy to even be eligible to run, a hefty number and one of the many reasons that make this election unfair. The race started off with 22 contenders, but according to RFE/RL the Kazakh Central Election Commission announced on March 2 that only 4 candidates were able to fulfill the requirements qualifying them to compete for the country’s highest post. Eleven of them failed the Kazakh language test which disqualified them automatically, 3 stepped down and 4 did not pass the registration process.
Leading opposition parties have announced a boycott of the elections, thus essentially rendering this election uncompetitive as Nazarbayev faces no real challengers. According to Richard Orange, Vladimir Kozlov, head of the Alga! (Forward) Party and Bulat Abilov, leader of the opposition Azat party (National Social Democratic Party) are boycotting. In addition, Kozlov is teaming up with the Communist Party, and more than 55 non-governmental organizations to push for a nationwide boycott with the goal of lowering voter turnout to 30% of eligible voters. To be elected, Nazarbayev must receive more than half of all votes cast and if no candidate secures an election victory, a second round will be held within two months between the two candidates who received the most votes.
Nazarbayev himself sees no need to campaign, delegating the election activities to his Nur-Otan party. “I am not going to hold official pre-election events,” he said quoted in Daily Times. “I feel the support of the five million Kazakhs who signed the petition. I am grateful to Kazakhs for supporting my candidacy as president for a new term.”
The government is accused of internet censorship by blocking opposition websites periodically as well as some other domain names that could be used for blogging such as livejournal and wordpress. According to experts, no Twitter revolution is in sight, however. Bruce Pannier, one of RFE/RL’s Central Asia experts, says that “Kazakhstan is a huge country with a population of only some 16 million and with few compact urban areas such as Almaty and Astana. So upheaval — regardless of any Internet filtering activity on behalf of the government — looks very unlikely.”
If elected, which I think is a forgone conclusion unless there is a revolution (a highly unlikely scenario), Nazarbayev will be in power for the next 5 years. According to Kazakh law he can run an unlimited number of times. Why have elections at all? Even dictators (think Lukashenka) realize that democracy is the only game in town and are coming up with all kinds of ploys to keep a facade of democracy as opposed to doing away with elections outright. It is quite a challenge to be a dictator in the global age of the internet.
Interesting fact: Kazakhstan is the world’s ninth largest country by area at 2,724,900 sq km and is slightly less than four times the size of Texas.
