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World Politics Review, 05.04.2011, Global Insights: Observing Kazakhstan's Elections Firsthand
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World Politics Review, 05.04.2011, Global Insights: Observing Kazakhstan's Elections Firsthand


On April 4, 2011, Kazakhstan's Central Election Commission (CEC) announced the preliminary results of the presidential elections held the previous day. As expected, incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev won re-election by a wide margin, garnering 95.5 percent of the votes cast. The CEC will announce the final results in a few days, but these are not expected to change the outcome.

Despite noting significant irregularities, most of the international observation teams confirmed the outcome's validity. China, Russia, the United States and many other governments have already congratulated Nazarbayev on his victory.

But the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) cited some problems with the voting procedures that they had also found on previous occasions. These included restrictions on peoples' freedom of assembly and expression; ambiguities and gaps in the election law that resulted in its inconsistent application; the fact that most election commissioners were members of the ruling Nur Otan party; and a lack of due process and transparency in responding to complaints about the election process.

The OSCE monitors, who came from both its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, also noted various shortcomings at some polling stations they visited. They cited systematic and serious problems at 9 percent of the stations, including: cases of many identical-looking signatures on the voter lists; some alleged evidence of ballot stuffing, where boxes contained stacks or clumps of ballots; voters allowed to cast ballots without presenting the correct forms of identification; the presence of unauthorized persons in polling stations; ballot boxes that were not properly sealed; and possible instances of group, proxy or multiple voting. The observers also claimed that their monitoring activities were sometimes improperly restricted.

Nevertheless, the OSCE, which usually gives a more cautious assessment of national elections, cited improvements as compared to previous ballots. For example, the OSCE monitors noted that the election was technically well-administered by the election commissions at all voting levels, from the CEC to the lowest-level district commissions. Furthermore, the OSCE praised the CEC for providing extensive training to voting commissioners on how to behave in a professional and responsible manner. Furthermore, the Kazakh news media provided more-equal coverage of the candidates than in the past. The authorities also encouraged the media as well as local and international observers to monitor the vote. Finally, the CEC organized a comprehensive door-to-door verification of the lists of eligible voters, improving their accuracy.

During the past few days, I had the opportunity to observe Kazakhstan's April 3 presidential elections first-hand as a member of the Independent Observer Mission, accredited by the CEC and sponsored by the International Tax and Investment Center, an independent nonprofit research foundation that focuses on risk assessment in the former Soviet republics and elsewhere. I and the other half-dozen members of my team saw none of the kinds of allegations cited in the OSCE report, though that might have been because we were deployed in the large cities. Foreign diplomats believe that most of the irregularities occurred in more remote areas, where local officials sought to gain favor with national leaders by having very high vote turnouts.

Knowing they could not defeat Nazarbayev, several opposition groups called for a boycott of the vote, hoping to claim that anyone who did not vote supported their position. Some local officials apparently sought to counter this strategy by securing very high vote totals through the inappropriate methods cited by the OSCE. One way to counter this problem in the future would be to tabulate and post on the Internet the vote totals for each precinct as soon as they close. This would allow monitors to check the totals with their own findings and point out any discrepancies. It would also quickly make evident anomalies, such as the nearly 100 percent turnout rate reported by one locality.

In any case, based on the reports made by earlier OSCE missions, it seems that this year's elections were conducted in a more technically efficient and transparent manner than in previous national ballots. At the polling stations I visited in Almaty, Kazakhstan's largest city, the rules regarding the secrecy of the ballot, the exclusion of electioneering or other inappropriate behavior in voting places and other regulations were generally followed.

At the central level, the CEC genuinely strove to make the entire voting process transparent. Along with a colleague, I had the opportunity to meet the head of the CEC in Astana on March 31, with the meeting broadcast on national television. From what they told us, the commission made an admirable effort to apply lessons learned from earlier ballots to the current election as well as to collect new lessons on this occasion to improve future rounds of voting. For example, they stopped using electronic voting after the OSCE had complained about transparency and other problems with the technique, which voters apparently also were suspicious about.

Throughout the process, no one tried to deny my access to the polling places I visited or instructed me what to tell the numerous media outlets covering the voting. In our meetings with leaders of political parties and independent groups, I heard frank and comprehensive criticism of the government policies, including regarding the April 3 presidential elections. Yet, even those parties that were boycotting the current ballot intend to field candidates in the forthcoming parliamentary elections, which will likely occur next year.

The main problem with the recent ballot was the irregularity of the entire process due to an accelerated election schedule. That became possible when the national legislature, dominated by the president's Nur Otan party, rapidly amended the national constitution on Feb. 3 to permit an early vote, which Nazarbatyev authorized the following day.

The reasons why it became necessary to hold the presidential elections two years earlier than planned were never made clear. The formal justification was that it offered a better alternative to a proposed national referendum, supposedly backed by more than half the population, which would have simply canceled outright the next two presidential elections then scheduled for 2012 and 2017. Western governments and nongovernmental organizations had denounced the proposed referendum as a potential setback for Kazakhstan's commitment to developing its democratic institutions and practices.

In addition to suddenly rescheduling the presidential elections, the legislature also provided for a short 30-day campaign period. Caught unprepared for the suddenly imminent vote and lacking the means to recover in the short time available for campaigning, most of the potential opposition candidates and political parties declined to participate. Two of the parties even tried to organize a boycott of the vote, though they lacked the grassroots networks or other resources to gain much support.

As a result, the whole process produced a non-competitive election in which Nazarbayev faced only three weak candidates who declined to challenge the incumbent directly. They notably did not even press for the nationally televised debates Kazakhstan has held in past elections among candidates. Furthermore, many potential candidates were disqualified by the CEC-appointed Linguistic Commission that verified candidates' knowledge of Kazak, the state language, though the criteria by which they made these evaluations was unclear. Nazarbayev also received more media exposure than his opponents since coverage of any activity he undertook as president -- including local visits and meetings with foreign leaders -- was exempt from the formal election-related equal-time rule.

Fortunately, these problems can be easily corrected, particularly the question of unscheduled elections and rushed constitutional amendments. And the most serious complication -- the advantage of incumbency -- will end when Nazarbayev retires from public life. In addition to being very popular at home and well-respected abroad, Nazarbayev, as the country's first president, is treated as the Kazakh equivalent of George Washington. The legislature has even formally exempted him from the two-term re-election limit that would apply to all other presidents. Without Nazarbayev as a candidate, the improved election machinery and procedures shown on this occasion will provide a solid foundation for Kazakhstan to conduct free and fair elections in the future.

Richard Weitz is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a World Politics Review senior editor. His weekly WPR column, Global Insights, appears every Tuesday.

Richard Weitz | Bio | 05 Apr 2011