EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Kazakhstan: Election Results Harden Opposition

EURASIA INSIGHT

KAZAKHSTAN: ELECTION RESULTS HARDEN OPPOSITION
Ibragim Alibekov 9/27/04

As plans are announced to give Kazakhstan an official ruling party in the wake of last week’s parliamentary elections, political opposition against President Nursultan Nazarbayev is hardening. Ak Zhol, a centrist opposition party and one-time government ally, has announced plans to challenge the results of Kazakhstan’s recent parliamentary elections and to ally with two other opposition parties in a national protest against the vote.

Speaking on Khabar TV’s September 26 program "Zheti Kun", presidential aide Yermukhamet Yertysbayev declared that the pro-presidential party Otan (Fatherland) can now effectively be considered Kazakhstan’s ruling party following the September 19 vote. According to data from the Central Election Commission, Otan secured more than 60 percent of the votes cast.

"There is a unique possibility now to institutionalize a ruling party," Yertysbayev said. "Until now, there has not officially been a ruling party and consequently, there has not been official opposition as legalized public institutions. I believe that this mechanism will inevitably be formed within five years." Further details for this process were not provided.

Election results released four days after the September 19 poll showed a clean sweep by Otan with 60.62 percent of the overall vote. Ak Zhol (Bright Path) trailed Otan with just over 12 percent of the vote, followed by Asar (All Together) with 11.38 percent and the lesser known pro-government bloc Aist, or Agrarian-Industrial Union of Workers, with 7.07 percent of the vote.

Under Kazakhstan’s electoral system, Otan will have seven out of a possible ten members of the 77-seat parliament elected proportionally, or by party list, with the remaining three seats given to Ak Zhol, Asar and Aist. Remaining seats are allotted to individual candidates. Seats for 22 of the country’s remaining 67 single-mandate electoral districts remain contested, according to the Central Election Commission (CEC). Run-offs in those districts have been scheduled for October 3, KazInform reported on Monday.

The reaction of Ak Zhol, the only opposition party to win a seat in parliament, to the election results was swift. "These results do not represent the real results of the people’s will," a September 23 statement posted on the party’s website reads. "They only represent the most blatant falsification and vote-rigging, and they do not even conform to those results that were recorded during vote counting at polling stations on the night from September 19 to September 20." Officials have said that the party expected to receive as much as half of the overall vote count.

In response to the announced results, the party, a sometime government ally, has planned a string of actions designed to mobilize popular opposition to the government. The first, a national protest against the parliamentary vote, scheduled for October 2, the day before run-off elections, is being organized in conjunction with Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DCK) and the Communist Party, two opposition parties whose own election bloc failed to secure a seat in parliament. The one Ak Zhol candidate to win a seat in parliament � Co-chairman Alikhan Baymenov � has since stated that he would refuse to take his seat as a form of protest against the elections’ alleged illegitimacy.

In discussions about the October 2 demonstration, opposition members have repeatedly referred to Georgia’s November 2003 Rose Revolution, when a popular protest of parliamentary election results led to the overthrow of President Eduard Shevardnadze.

If relatives and friends of those opposition candidates who lost in the elections "take action with the demand to reexamine the election results and bring to justice those guilty of their falsification, then there will be pressure [for change]," wrote former emergencies minister Zamanbek Nurkabilov, an outspoken Nazarbayev critic, in a September 24 commentary in the pro-opposition newspaper Respublika. "There will be pressure if they, like the Georgians, stand to the end, not giving the authorities any peace. "

While sidestepping the opposition’s allusions to the Georgian revolution, Yertysbayev on Sunday rejected claims that Otan’s victory at the polls meant that Kazakhstan would become a one-party state. "A one-party parliament is possible only in one case - only if we stipulate in our constitution that Otan is a leading and directing force of Kazakh society," he said. "This is impossible because political pluralism has taken too deep root in our country."

Despite their plans for protest, Ak Zhol members have stated that a government reaction to their earlier concerns could halt additional measures. Altynbek Sarsenbaev, a party co-chairman who resigned as information minister to protest the elections, stressed that the president’s response will dictate the party’s future actions. "We will wait for his reaction. . . An expression of distrust is our first step. If anti-constitutional activities continue in Kazakhstan, we`ll react quite tough," Sarsenbaev told reporters Thursday.

If no response is received, Co-chairman Bolat Abilov, told a press conference Thursday, Ak Zhol will attempt to stage a public vote of confidence in the president. The party also plans to set up a public commission, made up of parliamentarians, non-governmental organizations and political parties, which will investigate reports of voting violations � reportedly the result of the government’s failure to respond after three appeals last week from Ak Zhol to President Nazarbayev to respond to alleged voting violations. CEC chairperson Zagipa Baliyeva had earlier stated that all reports of voting violations would be thoroughly examined.

Ak Zhol has also announced plans to request that the courts bring a criminal case against the Central Election Commission, members of the presidential administration and government officials for the provinces and cities of Astana and Almaty for the conduct of the elections. The party has demanded that parliament request the Constitutional Council to declare the vote unconstitutional and is undertaking a signature drive for fresh parliamentary elections to be held.

In a detailed overview of the opposition’s complaints, a statement posted on the DCK website Friday declares that DCK-Communist Party election monitors believe 90,000 voters were denied the right to take part in the elections. The group goes on to charge that the government’s newly introduced and much-touted electronic voting system was "used as a tool for the large-scale fraud." The group demands that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) refuse to monitor the run-off elections and declare the September 19 poll invalid.

The OSCE’s 330 monitors have been fairly critical of the vote, reporting widespread violations of election law as well as instances of voter intimidation, and criticizing media bias in favor of pro-government candidates.

So far, the government has largely ignored the opposition’s reaction. On September 24, one day following the results’ announcement, Nazarbayev paid a two-day official visit to China’s Xinjiang region. A September 24 edition of the pro-government Kazakhstanskaya Pravda newspaper avoided all mention of the opposition’s threats, focusing instead on foreign media coverage of the poll that referred to the new wealth created under Nazarbayev by Kazakhstan’s energy boom.

Speaking on Khabar TV Sunday, Yertysbayev largely followed that pattern. A longtime sparring partner for Kazakhstan’s opposition, the presidential aide commented that a failure in Ak Zhol "intelligence" had led to Sarsenbaev’s resignation on September 20 � three days after Nazarbayev announced a plan for the dissolution of the information ministry headed by the Ak Zhol leader. "Had [Sarsenbaev] done it on 15 September, Wednesday, or 16 September, Thursday, there would have been an effect. . ." Yertysbayev said. "Nonetheless, one should give him his due: he fulfilled his promise - he is the last information minister."

But ignoring Ak Zhol for long could prove a difficult task. Unlike other opposition members, Ak Zhol, which retains extensive ties to Kazakhstan’s business elite, has traditionally favored some form of compromise with the government. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections, the Nazarbayev administration and the pro-presidential party Asar made overtures to the group on a range of policy issues that could affect power-sharing, most notably with the appointment of Sarsenbaev as information minister in July.

But Ak Zhol officials maintain that those days of co-existence have come to an end. Some analysts believe that a union between Ak Zhol and the more stridently anti-government Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan and the Communist Party could well be in the offing. Though Ak Zhol has said that it has no plans to form an official bloc with any other political party, the three, along with the lesser known Patriotic Party of Kazakhstan, are working together on preparations for the October 2 election protest. Ak Zhol also intends to help create an opposition bloc for presidential elections in 2006, Abilov told reporters Thursday.

Editor�s Note: Ibragim Alibekov is the pseudonym for a Kazakhstan-based reporter and analyst.

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