KZBlog

Some Primary Sources for your Evaluating Pleasure

• The OSCE preliminary findings and conclusions
  An interesting point not likely to picked up elsewhere:

  In observed polling stations with e-voting, a large majority of voters appeared to have favoured voting by paper ballot.

• The Institute for War and Peace Reporting Too Good to Be True?
• via kazakhstan.neweurasia.net, the Caspian Information Center reports:
  

  Second, the president has other natural advantages. The annual ten per cent increase in GDP achieved over the last five years, together with significantly rising living standards, a steady decrease in the number living below the poverty line, low levels of inflation and substantial increases in public sector pay and pensions during the present year, played a crucial part in shaping voter preferences in favour of the incumbent president.

  Even in a stable Western democracy, an economic record of this kind would present serious difficulties for any opposition.

• also thanks to kazakhstan.neweurasia.net, Criticism of the CIC report
  Strong words:

  “They are lying,” Oraz Zhandosov, a former Finance Minister and co-leader of the Naghyz Ak Zhol party, told The Times. “This must have been funded by a large energy company or a front for the Kazakh Government.”

• Article about the US State Department reaction
  

  On the positive side….was the presence of five candidates on the ballot, including two opposition leaders, and greater transparency by election officials who published voter lists and other information on their website.

  On the downside were “undue restrictions on campaigning, harassment of opposition and independent media and media bias in favor of president Nazarbayev,”