The Kazakh leader wins the presidential elections with more than 81% of the vote
In many of the former Soviet republics, the trend of the communist era, consisting of showing that the population supports their leaders by an overwhelming majority, continues in force. Such is the case of Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan and the Central Asian republics, with the exception of Kyrgyzstan, whose system is somewhat more democratic and less prone to electoral fraud.
The same trend of sweeping the polls has now been revealed in the presidential elections held on Sunday in Kazakhstan, the largest country in Central Asia and one of the richest in the area in terms of natural resources. The current head of state, Kasim-Zhomart Tokáyev, 69, has obtained more than 81% of the vote while the other five candidates have each barely passed 3%.
According to the president of the Central Electoral Commission of Kazakhstan, Nurlán Abdírov, with the counting of the ballots practically completed, Tokáyev has obtained 81.31% of the votes; Zhiguli Dairabáyev, 3.42%; Karakat Abdén, 2.60%; Meiram Kayikén; 2.53%; Nurlan Auyesbáyev, 2.22% and Saltanat Tursinbékova, 2.12%. 5.8% voted blank and participation stood at almost 70%. In this way, the top Kazakh leader, elected for the first time in June 2019 and who had his acid test with the deadly outbreak of disorders at the beginning of the year, revalidates his supremacy definitively emancipated from his mentor, his charismatic predecessor in office. , Nursultan Nazarbayev. He now has a seven-year term ahead of him.
Tokayev’s five opponents in these elections, two women and three men, are total unknowns. His candidacies were registered two months before the voting. Some analysts believe that they are part of the presidential team and they appeared in the elections to give the impression that democracy works. But observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have deplored that “excessively restrictive regulations unjustifiably limit the right of citizens to stand for election” in Kazakhstan.
Relationship with Moscow
The premeditated distancing of Nazarbáyev carried out by Tokáyev put a test of relations with Russia, despite the help that Moscow sent troops to Kazakhstan to help stabilize the situation and end riots that caused at least 238 deaths. Nazarbayev was always President Vladimir Putin’s man in Central Asia, but the presence in Kazakhstan of forces from the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (ODKB in its Russian acronym), which encompasses Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, ended up helping Tokáyev to consolidate his power to the detriment of the previous president. One of the first measures that he promoted after the January crisis was to remove the name of Nur-Sultan from the capital to return it to Astana.
The re-elected Kazakh president also had the audacity to tell Putin to his face, last summer in Saint Petersburg, that he will never recognize “quasi-states” such as the breakaway Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. That was before Moscow annexed them along with Kherson and Zaporizhia. Recently in Samarkand (Uzbekistan), the Kazakh president told his Russian counterpart that his country will always respect the territorial integrity and independence of any state and will abide by the charter of the United Nations”, a comment that was not much liked by the Kremlin either. Even so, Putin congratulated him on his victory in the elections and called for maintaining the old relations of “friendship, good neighborliness and mutual respect.” He also congratulated Nazarbayev and the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Tokáyev, according to what he declared during the campaign, intends to undertake profound reforms of the economy and the political system and maintain good relations with all his neighbors, especially Russia and China, in addition to promoting contacts with the United States.
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