ASTANA - The ruling Nur Otan party of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev is set to win a crushing victory in parliamentary elections with 81 percent of the vote, an exit poll said Sunday.
The pro-business Ak-Zhol party and the Communist Party would scrape into parliament with 7.3pc of the vote apiece, the poll by the Institute of Democracy said. The minimum threshold to win seats in parliament is 7pc.
The vote is designed to breathe new life into a system under which veteran leader Nursultan Nazarbayev sacrificed political freedoms in exchange for a record decade of micro-managed economic prosperity.
The resulting social tensions exploded in December when 16 people were killed in clashes between striking oil workers and security forces in what became Kazakhstan’s worst bloodshed since the Soviet Union’s fall.
The 71-year-old president - in power since 1989 and still with no clear successor in sight - said after casting his ballot in the capital Astana that the vote was “a big test”. “I am sure that the Kazakh people will make the right choice for their future, for the country’s development, for calm in our common country,” the former metal worker said in comments posted on his website. “We have done everything necessary to ensure an open and fair vote,” he said.
Six parties are challenging Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan (Light of the Fatherland) group under new rules in which the second-place finisher will for the first time collect seats even if it wins less than the seven-percent threshold.
A study by the Institute for Social-Political Research said Nur Otan should take more than 80 percent of the vote - only just off the 88 percent it garnered in the last parliamentary ballot in 2007.
Its nearest challenger on around seven percent should be the Ak Zhol (Bright Path) party - a state-crafted business lobby that steers well clear of criticising the president.
The opposition All-National Social Democratic Party (OSDP) - expected to come in third - pledged to lead street protests if the authorities rigged the vote. Two of its leaders have been struck from the ballot on technical grounds.
“If they lie to us this time, steal people’s votes, we’ll take to the streets,” OSDP party chairman Zharmakhan Tuyakbai told supporters at an election rally.
The opposition and international observers condemned the conduct of April 2011 presidential election that saw Nazarbayev win more than 95 percent of the vote in a poll where even one of his rivals voted for the Kazakh strongman.
Turnout on that occasion was reported at a massive 90 percent despite the utter lack of election suspense and a similar figure seemed likely for Sunday’s ballot.
Election authorities quoted an afternoon turnout figure of nearly 70 percent without any reports of serious violations.
Yet Nazarbayev appears to enjoy genuine respect among Kazakhs who are taught to refer to their leader as “Papa” in school and a colourful array of prominent candidates heads his party’s election list.
They include the president’s eldest daughter Dariga and the cyclist Alexander Vinokurov - arguably the country’s most famous sportsman.
All are designed to give a more humane face to Nazarbayev’s strongman rule and regain people’s trust in his vision of Kazakhstan’s future.
“I think that we should be raising parliament’s status,” Dariga Nazarbayeva said in comments reflecting recent efforts to gradually ease the president’s authority before an eventual transition from Nazarbayev’s rule.
Nazarbayev has already responded to the Zhanaozen unrest by sensationally sacking top energy executives as well as his own son-in-law and one-time possible successor Timur Kulibayev as head of the mammoth state holding firm.
He has also ordered elections to be held in the riot-hit Caspian Sea city in response to concerns that voters were being frozen out of the polls as punishment for protesting against the authorities.
Police were investigating a mysterious fire in the country’s main mosque in Astana that had been set for a public independence day unveiling on December 16 before the Zhanaozen riot broke out.
The Kazakh emergencies ministry said fire fighters had discovered the body of one worker while rescuing 13 other from the blaze.