Early election results show Kazakh leader's party ahead

KAZAKHSTAN: President Nursultan Nazarbayev's supporters dominated Kazakhstan's parliamentary poll yesterday, according to early results, in an election already criticised in the West for bias against the opposition.

Preliminary results from a controversial e-voting experiment gave Mr Nazarbayev's Otan (Fatherland) party nearly 43 per cent and his daughter's new Asar (All Together) party 18 per cent of the vote.

International election monitors have berated the state-run media for their heavily-biased coverage of the election campaign, which saw two prominent opposition party leaders banned from the running.

Mr Nazarbayev, who has ruled Kazakhstan for 15 years and tolerates little dissent, said victory for his party would guarantee stability for the vast central Asian country, as its neighbours struggle with simmering social unrest and the threat of growing radicalism among their poor, mostly Muslim populations.

"Kazakh citizens will vote for this and not for the empty promises of mountains of gold that we won't ever see," he said, denouncing proposals from the three competing opposition parties to funnel huge oil revenues into social spending.

Kazakhstan expects to be one of the world's top 10 oil producers by 2015, but most of its 15 million people are still struggling to get by while a coterie of businessmen and relatives and friends of Mr Nazarbayev thrive.Corruption is rampant.

"People now understand where their problems come from," said Mr Oraz Zhandosov, co-chairman of the Ak Zhol (Bright Path) party, the strongest opposition group. "The problems that people are facing are stratification of society, where the gap between rich and poor is widening, and corruption which is in every layer of the society."

Mr Bulat Abilov, the leader of Ak Zhol, is barred from running for parliament while he serves a suspended sentence for libelling a pro-Nazarbayev deputy, while Mr Galymzhan Zhakiyanov, leader of Democratic Choice, is in prison on corruption charges, widely seen as politically motivated.

Their absence has left the way open for the Asar party of Ms Dariga Nazarbayeva (41) to share most of the vote with her father's party. Ms Nazarbayeva, an opera singer who oversees a clutch of television and radio stations, has criticised high-level corruption while praising her father's role as "father of the nation". She is seen as the likely next speaker of parliament, in preparation for her eventual accession to power.