16 January 2012
ALMATY, Kazakhstan—The ruling Nur Otan Party scored a widely expected, sweeping victory in Sunday's parliamentary vote, according to preliminary results, but European observers said the poll "did not meet fundamental principles of democratic elections."
"We expected better," said Joao Soares, the head of a 300-strong team of international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, on Monday.
Oil-rich Kazakhstan, which has presented itself as an island of stability in a turbulent region, has been trying to burnish an image tarnished on Dec 16 when police fired on unarmed protesters, killing at least 17, in an oil town in the west of the country.
Preliminary results showed President Nursultan Nazarbayev's Nur Otan party won 80.7% of the vote. Two other parties—the business-oriented Ak Zhol, which rarely challenges the government, and the People's Communist Party—just barely cleared the 7% threshold needed to win seats in parliament.
That result would end the monopoly the presidential party enjoyed in the outgoing legislature, though the newly admitted parties aren't expected to challenge the president.
"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," said Mr. Soares. Three major parties critical of the government were stricken from the ballot.
The OSCE also said its monitors detected at least a dozen cases of suspected ballot-box stuffing. Facebook and other social networks were full of reports of alleged vote rigging and manipulation. Prosecutors dismissed those reports as "provocations," the Interfax news agency reported.
Bulat Abilov, head of the Social Democrats, said the election demonstrated how Kazakhstan was gradually moving toward greater authoritarian control. Government officials rejected the OSCE's and other criticisms of the vote as biased.
The election came nearly a year after Mr. Nazarbayev, 71 years old, was re-elected to another five-year term with 96% of the vote.
Dosym Satpayev, a political scientist who heads the Risk Assessment Group consulting firm in Almaty, said the new parliament, unlike its predecessors, "may be called up to play an important role in a very difficult period, the transition to the next president."
But the three parties, which have never had to compete for votes, are composed of members who are "weak, corrupt and don't have popular support, so they're not likely to be up to task," he said.
