The Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev has been re-elected by a landslide but international observers have condemned the vote as flawed, producing a long list of violations.
"There was harassment, intimidation and detentions of campaign staff," monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe declared.
Official results gave Mr Nazarbayev 91 per cent of the vote, as against 7 per cent for his main challenger, former government minister Zharmakhan Tuyakbai.
Mr Tuyakbai vowed to challenge the result. "It's an obvious sign that our country is turning from an authoritarian regime into a totalitarian one."
Mr Nazarbayev however said the election was a success. "Percentage point and democracy have nothing in common. Kazakhstan voted for calmness and stability."
The OSCE has criticised previous elections of Mr Nazarbayev, who first took command of Kazakhstan as the general secretary of the Communist Party in 1989, when the state was part of the Soviet Union. He was elected in 1991, 1995 and again in 1999.
"It is with no great joy that I am about to say this on behalf of my colleagues," said Bruce George, head of the OSCE mission. "The December 4th presidential election in Kazakhstan did not meet a number of OSCE commitments."
Monitors said violations reported to them included students being threatened with losing grants if they did not vote for the president and nurses ordered to do the same by doctors.
"We've had senior doctors telling their medical staff this is who you should vote for," said British MEP Struan Stevenson, head of a monitoring delegation from the European Parliament.
Opposition newspapers were confiscated or saw their print runs cancelled, television was dominated by news of the president, while satirical programmes "targeted almost exclusively opposition figures," the report said.
The OSCE said a quarter of the vote count was "bad or very bad".
Observers reported "unauthorised interfering in polling stations, multiple voting, ballot-box stuffing." They were also confounded by an electronic voting system used in many polling stations which could not be monitored.
Russian observers gave the election a clean bill of health, saying they had seen no significant violations. President Vladimir Putin was among the first world leaders to phone and congratulate Mr Nazarbayev.
"The [ Russian observers] methodology appears to be: be nice to your friends," said Mr George.
Moscow also announced that, with Mr Nazarbayev confirmed in office for a further seven years, it was pressing ahead with a plan, first announced in 2003, to create a customs union, the Common Economic Space, binding it to Belarus and Kazakhstan.
This alliance will form the second biggest energy trading block after Opec, with plans to join the states with common tariffs, institutions and a currency.
Oil companies will take comfort from the result, which is likely to mean stability for the country and expansion of pipelines.
An OSCE report of fraud was the signal for Ukraine's opposition to start its Orange Revolution this time last year, ending in fresh elections and victory.
However there is little sign of Mr Tuyakbai mounting such a challenge. For one thing, Kazakhstan is enjoying an oil boom, with prosperity rising even among the millions of poor.
For another, the opposition stronghold is in Almata, 965km south of the capital, Astana. Another factor against protests, which are outlawed, is that snow and freezing temperatures of minus 20 degrees are sweeping the frozen Central Asian steppe.