Kazakhstan Today noted a small event on Friday, an event that could only fit in the miscellaneous section: Kazakhstan holds akim of oblasts and cities of regional value elections

Why aren’t elections a newsworthy event? For a few reasons: Until a few years ago, the President appointed (and Parliament approved) akims (or chief executives) of the oblasts (or provinces) and major cities, who then appointed the akims of regions and towns or villages. However for the past two years some test elections have been run here and there and it turns out that the incumbent was reelected back in, in most cases.

Also, note the headline—these are oblasts and towns of regional value i.e. not of national value. The big cities and the big, important oblasts are still under Presidential control.

The third reason is that the elections proceeded as follows: The incumbent akim made a list of candidates and then the local Mashlikhat (a popularly-elected assembly that performs primarily an advisory role) voted on them. Advertisements ran on Khabar television, that the elections were coming, but the joke was that no one was expected to do anything, since the elections weren’t open to the people and perhaps they could advertise elections in the Czech Republic on Khabar as well.

I happened to catch on the 26th of December, a representative of the Central Election Committee, Onakyn Zhumabekov, on Khabar’s “Betpe bet” (Face to Face) show—a feature that follows the news every weekday where a journalist interviews someone on a pressing issue of the day, and callers/emailers and welcome to send in questions.
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Wherein I divulge the procedure by which the relected President is honored

The Inaguration of Nursaltan Nazarbayev:

Typed up while watching Khabar TV’s broadcast 10:45am, in Kazakh and Russian alternating.
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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,”

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.

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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.

neweurasia posted recently on this International Herald Tribune article raising a timeless question–how sincere is the government about fair elections? The article says it is all show, citing issues with opposition newspapers being seized, and the overall autocratic politics of former Soviet leaders; my own earlier post was presented as evidence that the registration is being taken quite seriously. And I will say that I have seen no evidence of dirty pool in general, though a fair amount of self-censorship. As was pointed out in neweurasia here Nazarbayev would appear to be more at risk of the appearance of election fraud due to high election results, than actual election fraud. The appearance of free elections is key to both international image in general and OSCE leadership in 2009.

To give an idea of how serious the Kazakhstan government is about these elections appearing to be free, we can look at the International Media Center’s report for the 14th to the 20th Novemeber. Authorized by the Ministry of Culture, Information, and Sport to monitor media coverage, the report covers objective statistics about coverage of each candidate. A sampling:

1. The Nazarbayev quotation index as presidential candidate is notably lower than
the number of commercials and references focusing on his activity as Head of
State. Abylkasymov and Yeleusizov are reviewed only as candidates. Tuyakbai
and Baimenov are mentioned in other connections also.
2. Most of the Nazarbayev credits are provided by non-governmental channels.
Tuyakbai’s and Yeleusizov’s coverage is approximately equal in the state
owned and non-governmental channels, while the activity of Abylkasymov and
Baimenov is featured somewhat more by the state television than the non-governmental
channels.

This is followed by actual statistics of time, source, and attitude (positive, negative, neutral). Needless to say Nazarbayev wins hands down for coverage–though this includes coverage of him as President. The Ministry makes frequent, publically broadcasted, announcements of these sorts of results. One wonders if it includes the free newspapers stuffed in mailboxes–most of which are pro-opposition.

This is all very good, (more…)

Unfortunate Incidents and Warnings of Violence

After the Kyrgyz revolution, the government of Kazakhstan (among other nations) took a long hard look at their own situation and potential for such an uprising. A number of statements were made to the effect that Kazakhstan was too politically and socially stable, that the level of living was too high for such revolutions. In different shades, comments were made that Nazarbayve was too strong, that Akaev was known to be weak and it was his fault for running like he did. The Kazakh nation is too proud to shame their nation by revolting and threatening the stability and power of the state. Confident statements were made by Ministers, by the President, and his daughter that a colored revolution could not happen here. Some spurious comments have been made, espeically by outsiders, that Astana and Almaty are such beautiful, wonderful cities with great supermarkets full of good and stand as proof of the greatness of life in Kazakhstan—ignoring the poorer parts of the country, not to mention the cities and the very real problems that do exist in Kazakhstan. An article appeared in the Almaty Herald praising the strength of Nazarbayev and comparing him to other strong leaders, essentially claiming that it was right for a leader to destroy his enemies in any way possible. One would hope for a leader who also did some leading upon occasion of course. Protests and assaults were made, apparently without any official involvement, against Tuyakbai and his campaign leaders, by people carrying signs to the effect that he was destroying his nation by promoting foment.

Nonetheless, note was made that the threat existed of such a revolution—that the opposition was frustrated (whether because of the Administration’s injustices or because of their own weakness), that people can become infected, that the corrupted West was planting illegitimate roots in Kazakhstan, that certain elements could use revolution and anarchy to empower themselves. Note was made that the police have ordered crowd control weapons, and also machine guns, and were training in putting down rallies. The Kyrgyzstan revolution and its aftermath were shown in the press in terms of anarchy and rumors were spread that Russians were running away, cars were being impounded by the police on the road from Almaty to Bishkek. And to be fair, things aren’t pretty at the moment, through evidence exists that people still live there and go about their business.

Now we have some ominous announcements (more…)

courtesy of Registan.net

A Russian-based NGO has been refused observer status on the grounds that they are not an international organization. RFE/RL story here.

As far as I gathered from Khabar yesterday, they plan to protest it in court. Nathan links to a nice explanation of who these guys are.

[EDIT; And on the opposition-biased IAC Eurasia, some reported irregularities,
including that CIS-EMO was registered as an international organization in Ukraine, and that they were under heavy surviellience by the police.

The note has been made that these are not official CIS observers, but their reports are often in line with official CIS results, so it seems like potentially a good sign that they are not accredited, though this seems more in line with the “No foreign interference” line than anything else. Still the CIS monitors tended to heap praises on the previous elections–and were thus cited often in the official press–whereas the OSCE tended to point to flaws and issues. So this might also go under the “We want the OSCE chairmanship” policy.

Note this quote on: Kazelection2005 a website specially designed for foreigners to understand the election.

The OSCE is satisfied with the recent decision of the Constitutional Council to recognise the law on NGOs as non-complying with the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan.” “[This is] an important and doubtlessly a positive step of Kazakhstan in its wish to assert itself as a democratic state.
Mr Ivar Vikki, Head of the OSCE office in Almaty, August 30th 2005

Having worked in the Kazakhstan government, I can picture the bureaucrat who came up with the idea of putting OSCE quotes up, not to mention the recent Condoleeza Rice quote on the index page. I’m sure his boss loved it but it strikes a note or overdoneness to me.

Registan.net has a link to an interim report on the elections as well.

First a public service announcement:

My first encounter with the election came when a knock came at my door on a Sunday morning. I growled, “Who’s there?” in my meanest voice as one does. A timid voice replied, “The school, about the elections.” This made sufficently little sense as to tempt to me open the door. Two middle-school girls were standing on my door with the voter-registration form. They asked me to fill it out and when I explained that I wasn’t a citizen, they pressed that I should really fill it out. I pointed out that that might be against the law, and they got scared and left. (more…)

I was watching the news today on Khabar and I caught a Ministry of the Interior official saying something about how the incident would be investigated thoroughly. He also warned that the opposition was not the opposition, but ordinary citizens with the same responsbilities as any other citizen and that no one had the right to interrupt the stabilty of the country, or push for armed revolt or anything of that kind. There was also something about having spotted followers of Tuyakbai or not having spotted followers of Tuyakbai–I admt I got lost. I assumed he was speaking of the murder of Nurkadilov, but now I see on RFE/RL

“that two nephews of opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbaev have been hospitalized after three off-duty police officers severely beat them yesterday

. Sarsenbaev we will remember from just before last year’s parlimentary elections is co-chairman of Ak Zhol, a pro-Presidential opposition party, so to speak. He was appointed Minister of Information just before the elections, and then essentially forced to step down in order to not appear to be using his post. A number of controversial reforms to the press were being proposed at that time in response to claims that opposition were not getting equal time and that the President’s family had too strong a hold on the media.

Sarsanbaev is being cautious:

“I’m waiting for the end of the investigation,” Sarsenbaev said. “If police try to shield them [police officers involved in the incident], then we have to consider it as politically motivated incident. If they are punished in accordance with law, then we can consider it as an incident perpetrated by police officers acting as a bandits.”

Again, the sad part is that what had promised to be a peaceful election is getting ugly.

The 14 year old daughter of Yelena Nikitina, who works on Tuyakbai’s campaign, is apparently still missing.

We remember that earlier Tuyakbai and his supporters were pelted by rocks when they tried to meet in different parts of the country. And after that there was relative peace.

I will at some point in the next few days review the pre-election scene in Astana, including how I failed to get a Nazarbayev cap and shirt even though I pretended to be a law student…