The president’s party gets 54% of the vote. The other forces dispute only crumbs. The results of the single-member constituencies are awaited. The ruling party is the only group that has a structured system throughout the territory. The low turnout is not a good sign for the “new Kazakhstan” that the head of state dreams of.
Moscow () – While the counting of the ballots for the various levels of the elections on March 19 in Kazakhstan progresses, it is already possible to analyze the main results, which will not be challenged by the final count. This vote closes the hectic phase of “changes” after the clashes over the protests in January 2022, which culminated in 228 deaths and numerous arrests, many of whom are still awaiting their fate.
The main issue refers to the transition from the authoritarian regime of the first “eternal” president, Nursultan Nazarbáyev, to another that seeks to present itself as more democratic than its predecessor and is led by Kasym-Žomart Tokaev, re-elected last November. In the recount of seats according to the proportional part, the president’s party, Amanat, would have obtained a majority of 54%, while when it was called “Nur Otan” -in homage to Nazarbáyev- it used to exceed 80% of the votes.
The Auyl party, always faithful to the ruling party, was in second place with 11%, and the rest was distributed among four other parties, thus forming a parliament of six parties in which no clear division of sides between the government can be seen to date. and opposition.
The appointments of the 29 elected in the majority constituencies have not yet been defined, among which there could be some surprises, despite the attempts to marginalize or exclude undesirable candidates in Akorda (the presidential palace).
The partial results seem to reassure the leadership, since in most of the single-member seats the percentages clearly favor Tokaev’s men. As the newspaper commentator points out Kursiv, Nikolaj Kuzmin, Amanat “is the only party that has a system of social and political communication that extends throughout the territory”, with its local sections and media at its disposal, its youth movement and a large presence on the networks social. It is the government that needs the party, and not the other way around,” explains Kuzmin.
There has also been an electoral scandal in Shymkent, the third largest city after Almaty and Astana. Complete voting protocols circulated on the Internet -compiled even before the electoral call began- and audios of officials evaluating how to avoid accusations of fraud.
Some “free” local candidates intervened publicly on the eve of the elections. Such is the case of Omir Šynybekulj, who warned that he “did not want the bloody events of January 2022 to be repeated”, and asked Tokaev to suspend the mayor of Shymkent in order to clarify the facts denounced. It all ended with the accusation of “false provocation” by the Electoral Committee, which intends to verify the results “with the utmost transparency.”
There were reports of other more or less serious cases of fraud in various regions: substitution of full ballot boxes and “carousels” of voters who showed up several times at the same polling station, and other incidents, as had already happened in previous elections, with announced. The OSCE observer mission negatively assessed 58 of the 128 controlled polling stations, with various violations of voting and counting procedures.
Broadly speaking, the forecast is for openly pro-government parties to win 60 of the 98 seats in Parliament. At least it is expected that among the deputies there will be some capable of making the voice of the most critical sectors of society heard. However, the most radical opponents are excluded, such as the independent politician Inga Imanbaj and the journalist Lukpan Akhmeljarov, two candidates who still harbor slim hopes of winning a mandate, but who already complain on social networks of “obvious fraud” in several electoral headquarters.
Kazakhstan’s most populous city, the former capital Almaty, has shown great distrust and apathy towards the elections, with a turnout of 25.8% compared to Astana’s 42.9%. It will be up to Tokaev to prove that the “new Kazakhstan” is capable of meeting, at least in part, the expectations of all its citizens.
