16 January 2012
Kazakhstan's parliamentary election has been described by European vote monitors as restrictive and falling short of democratic standards.
Their assessment pulls away the thin democratic veil that the Kazakh authorities had tried to drape over the election.
The vote may have ended Kazakhstan's one-party parliament but the two new entrants are pro-presidential parties and not genuine opposition.
"Notwithstanding the government's stated ambition to strengthen Kazakhstan's democratic processes and conduct elections in line with international standards, yesterday's early parliamentary vote still did not meet fundamental principles of democratic elections," the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said in a statement.
The OSCE is Europe's main democracy watchdog, a body thatKazakhstan, much to the delight of Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan's 71-year-old president, chaired in 2010.
Nur Otan, the party of Mr Nazarbayev, won 80 per cent of the vote in Sunday elections. The pro-business Ak Zhol and the Communist People's Party both scrapped over the 7 per cent threshold to gain seats in parliament.
But real opposition parties either did not take part in the vote or were marginalised. The Central Election Commission suspended the Communist Party, a rival to the Communist People's Party, in October for six months for colluding with a banned opposition group.
Other opposition leaders were also disqualified from the vote on technicalities.
Joao Soares, one of the heads of the OSCE observer mission, questioned Kazakhstan's commitment to genuine democracy.
"If Kazakhstan is serious about their stated goals of increasing the number of parties in parliament, then the country should have allowed more genuine opposition parties to participate in this election," Mr Soares said in the OSCE statement.
Mr Nazarbayev and his supporters have said that moving to full democracy in Kazakhstan is a process.
They have argued that fixing the economy, broken after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, had been the priority and that only now, after a decade of strong economic growth based on energy resources, can they shift gradually to democracy.
Last year it emerged that Tony Blair is acting as an adviser to Mr Nazarbayev on reforms in Kazakhstan. It is not clear, however, if democratic reforms are part of their discussions.
The OSCE has never judged an election in Kazakhstan to be free and fair and at the end of its statement on the parliamentary election, Miklós Haraszti, another of the delegation's heads, offered some advice.
"Genuine pluralism does not need the orchestration we have seen – respect for fundamental freedoms will bring it about by itself," he said.
