16 January 2012
This former Soviet republic, which in 20 years of independence has yet to hold an election that Western observers deemed to be fair, failed again over the weekend.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the main Western-backed group monitoring elections in the former Soviet Union, issued a statement on Monday that criticized the Kazakh authorities for deregistering parties and candidates at the last minute, depriving voters of choices.
The negative assessment called into question the sincerity of the government's efforts to liberalize the country at an important moment. Kazakhstan is a transit route for American supplies on their way into Afghanistan, and perhaps soon, for American troops on their way out. And American energy companies are at work developing the major oil fields here.
The statement by the O.S.C.E. praised the goal that President Nursultan Nazarbayev's government set for the election, to broaden representation in Parliament. But "if Kazakhstan is serious about their stated goals of increasing the number of parties in Parliament, then they should have allowed more genuine opposition parties to participate in this election," João Soares, a Portuguese lawmaker and the head of the monitoring group's observer mission, said in the statement on Monday. "Yesterday's early parliamentary vote did not meet fundamental principles of democratic elections."
When Mr. Nazarbayev dissolved Parliament in November, Nur Otan, the ruling party, held all 98 elected seats. In the election over the weekend, it once again received a commanding majority of the vote — 80.7 percent, according to electoral authorities — but the newly lowered threshold for winning seats meant that it would be joined in the chamber by two other parties: Ak Zhol, a pro-business party, and one of the country's two Communist parties, the Communist People's Party. Both received just over 7 percent, the new minimum required for representation, the authorities said.
Critics have questioned Ak Zhol's independence. Its leader, Azat Peruashev, was a member of Nur Otan until last year, when he resigned to form Ak Zhol. Once before when a second party had seats in the Kazakh Parliament, the party was led by Mr. Nazarbayev's daughter.
Beyond the monitoring group's critical statement, the election's fairness was disputed with scattered accounts of what appeared to be fraud. For example, election observers said they visited one polling place where 274 votes were cast for Nur Otan while only 2 people voted for other parties.
A video posted by Radio Liberty showed what seemed to be an instance of ballot box stuffing by a woman who casually slipped in multiple ballots; she claimed that elderly people with poor eyesight had left them for her to cast.
An opposition group, the National Social Democratic Party, which won just over 1 percent of the vote, has scheduled a rally for Tuesday in Almaty, Kazakhstan's commercial capital, though it lacks a parade permit.
Whether the small step toward pluralism, reflected by allowing new parties into Parliament, will suffice to diminish rising discontent remains to be seen. Central Asia has been largely exempt from the protests elsewhere in the Muslim world, though the police shot into a crowd of protesting oil workers last month, killing at least 16 people.
Kazakhstan is one of four Central Asian nations led by largely unreformed, Soviet-style potentates who appear increasingly anachronistic after the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa.
