In early presidential elections in Kazakhstan, incumbent President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev won at least 70 percent of the vote this Sunday, according to the first exit polls. This means that Tokayev, who competed against five virtually unknown opponents, can remain in power for the next seven years. This is thanks to a change in the law last September, in which Tokayev limited the presidency to one term, but at the same time extended its term from five to seven years. He called early elections that same month to, in his own words, reconfirm his mandate.
In the run-up to the elections, the Central Asian country was once again unsettled, where deadly uprisings broke out almost a year ago. Last week, opposition politician Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former minister and banker who was granted asylum in France last year and became the leader of the protests, called on Election Day to take to the streets against the incumbent government. According to the authorities, Ablyazov, who is very active on social media, is planning a violent coup from abroad. The police subsequently arrested a series of activists and human rights defenders in recent days.
Read also this interview about the political upheaval in Kazakhstan a year ago
Unknown opponents
At the end of last year, large protests broke out in Kazakhstan because of an increase in fuel prices. These resulted in deadly clashes and a power struggle between sitting president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the circle around his predecessor, the once all-powerful ruler Nursultan Nazarbayev, who pulled the strings for thirty years and helped Tokayev in the saddle. While Nazarbayev was overthrown and his supporters arrested, Tokayev accused foreign-led “terrorists” of staging a coup. He enlisted the help of the Russian-led security organization CSTO, which sent a short-lived peacekeeping force to restore order. A total of 238 civilians were killed, thousands of demonstrators and alleged sympathizers of the uprising were arrested. Some of them have now been granted amnesty.
Tokayev took on five largely unknown opponents on Sunday, including two women for the first time. As expected, none of them gained more than a few percentage points. The president himself didn’t seem to take the election race too seriously: this week he sent a representative to the only preliminary televised debate. This despite the major political and economic problems in the country, which are partly caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the associated international sanctions war, the influx of Russian refugees and rising inflation.
According to analysts, this casual attitude detracts from Tokayev’s promise to break with the undemocratic political system that his predecessor Nazarbayev maintained for decades. Although Tokayev does not seem unpopular among Kazakhs, the question is whether he will allow real reforms in the coming years. “Such old-fashioned elections in what Tokayev himself calls the ‘New Kazakhstan’ are not good for a president who presents himself as a reformer,” said Kazakhstan-based journalist Joanna Lillis to Radio Free Europe. “This was an opportunity to prove that he takes democratization seriously. Instead, he chooses to micromanage the election as Nazarbayev always did.”
Also read this article about the 2019 elections: Kazakhstan votes, but critical young people go for a walk