KZBlog

An interesting twist on the referendum story. The Central Election Committee issued an order that all signatures will be destroyed, which is to say,

All the [petition] papers with the signatures have the status of confidential information and should be kept at the [Central Election Commission] for three months and then should be destroyed in accordance with this resolution.

What makes it so interesting is that this resolution was issued on the 13th of January, and the initiative group handed in the signatures on the 14th. Many critics of the referendum to extend Nazarbayev’s term until 2020, which would annul elections in 2012 and 2017, believe that the signatures are being destroyed in order to prevent any investigations into irregularities. It does seem odd that the resolution to destroy the signatures wouldn’t include a clause that specifies they will be preserved as long as there are legitimate investigations.

I can’t find anything specifically in the laws about referendum signatures and what is supposed to happen to them. I assume eventually they would be destroyed, as all documents are, but shouldn’t they be kept for some time? Any lawyers out there who can put this into perspective?