KZBlog

I’m back an just in time to report on the biggest shocker in Kazakhstan politics in history: According to preliminary results, Nurotan won 88% of the vote, while no opposition party won more than the 7% necessary to get a seat in Parliament. It’s not a surprise give the way NurOtan has been strengthening for the past year, most recently naming the President, Nursultan Nazarbayev, as its head. It’s also no surprise that one party won given a piece of mathematics that was not cited at the time of the constitutional reforms. It was trumpete everywhere that the new reforms mean that a party needs only 7% of the vote to get a seat. What was noted at that time was that, with 5 parties in the running (NurOtan, the Social Democratic Party, Ak Zhol, the Kazakh Patriots Party and the Communist Party) was that one party needed only about 76% of the vote to win all the seats. If 4 parties win 6% of the votes, they don’t get a seat, meaning that 24% of the vote goes to naught. Nurotan’s size and resources meant it was not hard to get a large enough percent to push the other parties out of the running.

The opposition is refuting the election as observers have indicated irregularities. Most notable was an earlier report that the electronic voting system in Kazakhstan while not in danger of being tampered with by outside forces, could be tampered with by the Central Election Committee.