Kazakhstan

Since independence in 1991, Kazakhstan’s ‘southern capital’, Almaty, has engaged in fairly extensive efforts at ‘Kazakhising’ local toponyms. Now the central arteries of the city, once part of the old Soviet planimetry, display ‘genuinely’ Kazakh names. Streets once bearing the names of Bolshevik icons like Kalinin and Kirov are now named after legendary heroes (Kabanbai Batyr) or other figures from Kazakhstan’s nomadic past (Bogenbai Batyr). The example of Furmanova ulitsa offers a fitting metaphor to describe the sense of political stagnation that pervades today’s Kazakhstan. A sense that much-needed change has been postponed until the inevitable, though not yet imminent, leadership change.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s ruling party maintained its dominant role in parliament even as two other parties unexpectedly won seats following the worst violence in the oil-rich nation in 20 years.
Nur Otan garnered 80.74 percent of the vote in yesterday’s election, Kuandik Turgankulov, the head of the Central Electoral Commission, told reporters today in the capital, Astana, after 100 percent of votes were counted. The pro-business Akzhol party and the Communists scored above the 7 percent threshold to win seats in the Majilis, the lower house of parliament, he said. Turnout was 75.07 percent.

At least one new party will enter Kazakhstan’s parliament after an election that offered a small concession to democracy following deadly riots by oil workers which shook the country’s stable image built up by President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Exit polls after Sunday’s election in the vast Central Asian state put the long-serving leader’s Nur Otan party on course to win by a landslide. But they also suggested two other parties broadly sympathetic to the government, the pro-business Ak Zhol and the Communist People’s Party, could enter the lower house.

Voters headed to polling stations in large numbers Sunday in the oil-rich Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan in elections that look to have slightly broadened democratic representation in parliament’s rubber-stamp lower house. The high turnout, which reached 75 percent, is perhaps more an outcome of habit than hope, however, since the legislature will likely only undergo cosmetic changes.