And The Winner Of The Kazakh Presidential Election Is…

Are you ready for this? Brace yourself and hold on to your seats because the winner of the most competitive, unpredictable, and exciting election in the history of Kazakhstan (sarcasm intended) is….Nursultan Nazarbayev. Really?! Same guy that has been in power since the late ’80s? Yup! This reads like an article from the Onion, but unfortunately, it is more sad than funny.

Nazarbayev’s victory has been a forgone conclusion since the snap presidential election was announced in February of this year. On April 3, the incumbent garnered 95.5% of the vote (with a total turn out of 89.5%) outperforming his earlier achievement of 91% in the previous election in 2005. Nazarbayev is about to begin his fourth term in office and thanks to the amendments to the constitution that makes an exception for him as “the leader of the nation,” he can run for the highest office in the country an unlimited number of times. The Patriots Party leader Ghani Kasymov was the front runner amongst the three Nazarbayev’s opponents receiving 1.9% of the vote. Zhambyl Akhmetbekov of the pro-Nazarbaev Communist People’s Party received 1.4%, while Mels Eleusizov, leader of the Tabighat (Nature) ecological union received 1.2% and has proudly announced that he and his family voted for Nazarbayev.

I want to talk about the findings of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) that deployed 350 short-term election observers from 43 participating states who observed at 1,445 polling stations out of a total of 9,725 in the country. The OSCE published a preliminary assessment on the election compliance with the OSCE commitments for democratic elections, as well as with legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan with the final report due to come out on April 11, 2011.

The Good: First of all, unlike in Russia during the last elections, the Kazakh authorities invited the OSCE observers with conformity to the OSCE commitments and without restriction. The OSCE reports that the election was technically well-administered. BUT – there is always a caveat – it was noted in the same sentence that it was characterized by the “absence of opposition candidates and of a vibrant political discourse resulted in a noncompetitive environment.” Election commissions at all levels, including the Central Election Committee (CEC), handled the technical aspects of the election in a professional manner and their regular sessions were open to observers and the media. BUT, although political parties are entitled to nominate members of the election commissions, except for the CEC, “the majority of members on many election commissions were de facto affiliated with the ruling Nur Otan party, which caused lack of trust in the impartiality of the election administration.” The OSCE states that there were efforts made by the authorities to improve the quality of the voter lists by conducting a large-scale door-to-door verification and ensuring public review.

The Bad and the Ugly: The incumbent’s campaign was highly visible with several reports of rallies and political events with participants who claimed they were instructed to attend. Nazarbayev’s challengers’ political campaigns were generally low-key due to shortages of funds and limited organizational capacities and barely visible outside Astana and Almaty.

The international observers reported a number of serious irregularities, including “series of seemingly identical signatures on the voter list (219 cases) and strong indicators of ballot stuffing (28 cases).” Other violations included ballot boxes that were not properly sealed, group and multiple voting, and proxy voting. In 80 polling stations visited by the OSCE observers, people who did not present any form of ID were still allowed to vote, and in 73 polling stations visited, voters were turned away because their names were not on the voter list. The presence of unauthorized persons in polling stations remained a problem in 134 precincts, whereas direct interfering of these persons occurred in 14 instances. In 125 polling stations, international observers were restricted in their observation.

More serious violations, however, occurred during the vote count and tabulation, with one out of the six polling stations assessed negatively by the observers. Transparency was often lacking, many ballot boxes that were delivered suggested ballot stuffing, rules and procedures were not followed such as voters’ choices were not announced aloud, as required by law, and several protocols were pre-signed.

Conclusion? In 2010, Kazakhstan was the first ex-Soviet state to assume the rotating chairmanship of the OSCE with the Europeans hoping that this would prod the country along a democratic path. A year later we have an early election masterminded by the regime as a means to hold on to power that is not deemed free and fair by the OSCE. In this case at least it makes one wonder if carrots really go into the ‘stan’ soup. Overall, I think, Nazarbayev focused his efforts on conducting a snap election riding his popularity wave and thereby restricting the political access of challengers to the regime. He concentrated less on falsifying the voting process as it would have put him and his regime under scrutiny and brought criticism from the OSCE and the international community.

The inauguration of the new (same old) president Nursultan Nazarbayev will take place on April 8.  Russian president Dmitri Medvedev was the first foreign leader to congratulate and send his best regards to Nazarbayev on Monday.

Read the OSCE’s Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusion here.