High Turnout expected for Kazakh Election

    Kazakh authorities are expecting a high turnout for Sunday’s parliamentary election.
    A recent poll administered by Alternativa found that 98.6 percent of poll respondents said they would vote, the Kyiv Post reported.
    According to figures released by Alternative, pro-presidential party Nur-Otan has a solid lead with 78.2 percent of respondents saying they favor that party.
    Ak Zhol, a business-oriented political party, came in second with the poll sample, garnering the support of 14.3 percent of poll participants.
    “The upcoming elections aim at formation of a multiparty parliament and are an important step on the way to the democratic development of the country,” the Gazeta.kz news agency reported Chairman of the Kazakh Senate Kairat Mami as saying during a meeting with visiting Chinese envoy Chen Zhili.
    Seven political parties are contesting the election, Mami said.
    The election marks the first time in which more than one party will be mandated to enter parliament. Previously, all parliamentary contests were exclusively won by the pro-presidential Nur-Otan party.
    An international observer mission says that Kazakhstan has made some democratic progress since 2007 parliamentary elections, but more needs to be done.
    The observers, which include members of the Jamestown Foundation and the Central Asia and Caucasus Journal, note that local officials need to meddle less in the electoral process.
    “The January 15 elections might be the last elections before another generation of leaders, emerges to carry the country forward,” observers said in the statement.
    “A multi-party democratic system with checks and balances between the president and parliament, politicians loyal to the constitution rather than to a single person, the rule of law, and free and fair elections: there is no greater assurance of a country’s stability and security than these pillars of democracy.”
    President Nursultan Nazarbayev has ruled Kazakhstan since before it broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991.
    
    Editors note: one polling agency - Institute of Social and Political Studies expects 77.5% voter turnout (story below on vote spread). Another - Alternativa cited by the story above – predicted 98%. Yet another – the Institute for Democracy, said 78.3 percent of prospective voters would participate.