1) We are having our New Year’s Celebration today. All women were allowed to go home at 2pm so that they can make themselves beautiful. As it was explained to me, “We’re not going to some cafe, we’re going to a restaurant. The women shouldn’t look like they just came from work.”

2) The husband of a friend of mine who is pregnant and has been in the hopsital almost the entire pregnancy due to complications, insists that she keep a strict diet so she doesn’t get fat. Hmm…can’t imagine why she needs to be in the hosptial the entire time.

Some Primary Sources for your Evaluating Pleasure

• The OSCE preliminary findings and conclusions

  An interesting point not likely to picked up elsewhere:

  In observed polling stations with e-voting, a large majority of voters appeared to have favoured voting by paper ballot.

• The Institute for War and Peace Reporting Too Good to Be True?
• via kazakhstan.neweurasia.net, the Caspian Information Center report
  

  Second, the president has other natural advantages. The annual ten per cent increase in GDP achieved over the last five years, together with significantly rising living standards, a steady decrease in the number living below the poverty line, low levels of inflation and substantial increases in public sector pay and pensions during the present year, played a crucial part in shaping voter preferences in favour of the incumbent president.

  Even in a stable Western democracy, an economic record of this kind would present serious difficulties for any opposition.

• also thanks to kazakhstan.neweurasia.net, Criticism of the CIC report
  Strong words:

  “They are lying,” Oraz Zhandosov, a former Finance Minister and co-leader of the Naghyz Ak Zhol party, told The Times. “This must have been funded by a large energy company or a front for the Kazakh Government.”

• Article about the US State Department reaction
  

  On the positive side….was the presence of five candidates on the ballot, including two opposition leaders, and greater transparency by election officials who published voter lists and other information on their website.

  On the downside were “undue restrictions on campaigning, harassment of opposition and independent media and media bias in favor of president Nazarbayev,”

Dec 4th was:

1) The Presidential Elections in Kazakhstan–The incumbent won with 91%.

2) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out in Russian (ie came to Kazakhstan for the first time)

Fun with linguistics: I remember everything from the English version well enough to understand what is going on or I would be doomed. Also fortuantely, she uses fairly standard characterizations–when people get mad they turn red and fume, when people fall asleep studying their mouths hang open and their hair gets messed up. There’s a certain amount of predictability to the words.

• I suspect at the end of this, I will remember forever how to say “wizard” and “witch” in Russian, not to mention “magic wand.” This will be very useful vocabulary.
• There are a million words for “said.” Not only words like “whispered”, “shouted”, “commanded”, or “began to speak”, “continued”, but also words that are all defined in the dictionary as “said”, “uttered.” I cannot for the life of me figure out when each is supposed to be used.
• One of the complaints some Russian-speakers have noted is that the translator transliterates Rowling’s coinages instead of translating them into some Russian equivalent–so Hogwarts is just transliterated Xogvarts, etc.. But: Snape for some reason was changed to Snegg. and Hedwig is Bulka (which I think means ‘roll’). Words that have clear meanings are translated so Wormtail is “Xvost’” or “Tail”. It’s a little off-putting and I wish they would either translate or transliterate instead of doing both.
• The word for torture when used with a self-reflexive ending means “to try.” It’s getting confusing:
  “The Crufixatius (sp?) Curse is a horrible form of try.”
  “Torture to do better next time, please.”
  My wife noted that trying is like torturing yourself and I think this says a lot about the Slavic character.

The preliminary results are in:
91% of voters voted for Nursaltan Nazarbayev.
6.6% voted for Tuyakbai (For a Fair Kazakhstan)
0.38% voted for Yerasyl Abylkasymov (Communist Party)
1.65% for candidate Alikhan Baimenov (Ak Zhol)
and 0.32% for Mels Yeleusizov

77% of voters turned out.

The surprises are the high turnout, especially among youth and of course the sizeable victory.
Onalsyn Zhumabekov, chairman of the Kazakh Central Election Commission (CEC) declared the polls valid even though the OSCE held a press conference today in Almaty announcing that the elections did not meet OSCE standards:

While candidate registration was mostly inclusive and gave voters a choice, undue restrictions on campaigning, harassment of campaign staff and persistent and numerous cases of intimidation by the authorities, limited the possibility for a meaningful competition….Unauthorised persons interfering in polling stations, cases of multiple voting, ballot box stuffing and pressure on students to vote were observed during voting and during the count, observers saw tampering with result protocols and a wide range of procedural violations.

(more…)

The day job keeps me a little busy to be posting. But a couple of notes:

Apparently some people in Almaty pelted TSUM and Ramstor, the big shopping centers , with rocks. There is worry that there will be riots.

The Almaty police have detained hundreds of people. They claim that they are looking for illegal immigrants and workers. The rumor is that they are cleaning the streets of poor people that could be hired for rallies by the opposition. The counter -rumor is that they are using the threat of punishment to get them to rally for the President.

Kahar, the youth movement, was out on Arbat, the pedestrian street in front of TSUM with alarm clocks, stopping passerbyers saying, “It’s time to wake up.” They were pushing people to vote. Nothing like this could ever happen in Astana.

Nazabayev wear is available (in yellow and blue): T-shirts, caps, scarfs, bags, golf shirts. These tend to get handed out at meetings and rallies and I have been thwarted in all attempts to get anything off the street!

The Youth Congress has been putting out little stickers that say, “I’m 18, I Vote”

An advisor to the President has said that he will personally protest if the elections are unfair

The city is full of posters for Nazarbayev. Construction sites are big points for this:
“BI GROUP is FOR NAZARBAYEV” hanging off a superstructure, for example.

I’m going to hit the streets today and see if anything interesting is going on. Or maybe I’ll stay quietly at home and avoid any danger.