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Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was elected as the new president of Kazakhstan with 70.6% of the vote, after the June 9th elections in the country.
Tokayev is the “hand-picked successor” of former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who led the country for 29 years, from April 24th, 1990 until March 19th, 2019.
Tokayev’s nearest challenger received 16.2% of the vote, meaning that the race wasn’t even somewhat close, but it is quite apparent with the 70.6% result. Turnout in the election was around 77%.
The election day was marked by some protests. Demonstrators took to the streets boycotting the “fixed election.” Pro-opposition sources claimed that leading up to the election the opposition was targeted, with many protesters being sentenced to short stays in jail and police raiding the homes of activists.
The interior ministry said around 500 people were arrested on June 9th, with First Deputy Interior Minister Marat Kozhayev blaming “radical elements” for holding “unsanctioned” rallies. Two AFP journalists were also arrested, when police broke up a protest in the country’s largest city Almaty.
There is little surprise in Tokayev’s win, when in March Nazarbayev announced he was stepping down and appointed his successor as leader. Despite this, the 78-year-old former president still has a large influence on the nation. Nazarbayev has the official status of the “nation’s leader” [as the first president of independent Kazakhstan] and heads “Nur Otan”. He is also a member of the Constitutional Council and the head of the Security Council of Kazakhstan.
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told reporters in the capital Nur-Sultan that Nazarbayev was “still in power in the capacity of chairman of the security council […] and other capacities”.
In 2015, Nazarbayev received 98% of the vote, with a voter turnout of 95%. There was little opposition, as it is quite apparent.
No Kazakh vote has ever been recognized as fully democratic by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which sent more than 300 observers to monitor this election.
This year was no exception, with the OSCE noting that the early presidential elections were “tarnished by violations of fundamental freedoms.”
“The election took place in a political environment dominated by the ruling party and that limited critical voices,” the observation mission said in a statement. “At the same time, irregularities on election day and a disregard of formal procedures meant that an honest count could not be guaranteed,” it said.
“Election day was efficiently organized, but significant irregularities were observed across the country, including cases of ballot box stuffing, group voting and series of identical signatures on voter lists. During the day a number of peaceful protests disputing the electoral process were forcefully broken-up by police and led to widespread detentions in major cities. The count was negatively assessed in more than half of observations, including cases of deliberate falsification, raising serious questions about whether ballots were counted and reported honestly.”
It also claimed that the voter turnout was higher than practically possible in some places:
“In one-fifth of observations, the number of homebound voters was not recorded in the protocol. The number of ballots in the mobile ballot boxes was higher than the number of homebound requests in 81% of counts observed, but such ballots were invalidated in only 19% of cases. In 9% of all counts observed, the total number of ballots exceeded the number of voters who voted.”
Other organizations such as Human Rights Watch expressed the unlikelihood that any change would take place.
“The prospect of a genuine transition is an illusion,” said Human Rights Watch. “Given the short campaign period, restrictions on opposition activism and independent media, and the resources available to the leading party candidate, this election is unlikely to be different from past elections, which independent observers found to be neither free nor fair.
“Everything about this so-called transition has been carefully orchestrated and highly controlled – an approach the Kazakh authorities have long employed to regulate and restrict its citizens’ political and civil lives.”
It remains unclear what kind of “changes” did the OSCE and Human Rights Watch expect in the case of Kazakhstan? Kazakhstan is currently the most successfull state in the Central Asia with a relatively strong industrial power and a sovereign economy. The political and social situation in the country is mostly stable and the threat of terrorism is very low comparing to other Central Asian states. Kazakhstan’s stability and prosperity in the 2000s is linked with the figure of Nazarbayev and his policy.
On the international stage, Kazakhstan remains a key Russian ally in the region. This fact is also linked with the figure of the policy of Nazarbayev. Tokayev already declared that he will continue the foreign policy course provided by his predecessor. These factors are among the main reasons of the observed blame and shame campaign aimed at the election in the country. The Euro-Atlantic establishment would prefer to see Kazakhstan as a destabilized, weak state because this would contribute to its current geopolitical goals.
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Methinks its only the Americans who would like to see Kazakhstan go into turmoil. Not the Europeans, as they would be dealing with the consequences of a new refugee stream.
The European officials are simply stooges of the Americans. Europe has a long history of quislings. they would sell their mothers if the price was right.
Yeah, but they still have face re-election. And as you may have noticed mass immigration, especially from Muslim countries, has become a bit of a hot topic in Europe. Unless you want the SJW vote you’re not going to score any votes with wanting to let more of them in.
Yes but as you may have noticed the plutocrats put up Manchurian candidates like Macron and Zelensky. History shows the only way to end the tyranny is to kill all the rich folks.
Only to end up with new rich folks. History shows us that revolutions never give us the results we wanted, new assholes will take over (because turds always float to the surface) and overall we’ll be even worse off then before.
Yes that is true, but it takes them 100 years before they can so oppress the common that they have to be slaughtered, again.