Observers from the OSCE may not approved of in Nursultan Nazarbayev's 95.5 percent victory in Kazakhstan's presidential elections, but the Shanghai Cooperation Organization liked what it saw:
The elections of the President of Kazakhstan held on April 3, 2011 were free and transparent. Head of the Observers' Mission of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Muratbek Imanaliyev considers so.
"The Mission considers that the presidential elections of Kazakhstan were free and open, meeting all requirements of the national legislation and international election standards", M. Imanaliyev said.
Imanaliyev's further comments to the press read like gallows humor, but probably were not intended as such:
"The Kazakh election is being held in a very stable manner, without any twists in every sense of this word, primarily the political one. I think Kazakhstanis and their neighbors should only be glad of it,"Imanaliyev told a press conference in Astana on Sunday...
Asked what he thought about the lack of intrigue at the current election, Imanaliyev said: "Personally, I can only be glad about the absence of an intrigue."
"I understand what kind of intrigue you mean. (. . . ) But I am very content that everything is going smoothly," the SCO secretary general said.
Apparently "intrigue" here means "anything other than a foregone conclusion."
As we've reported, the line between the SCO's military/collective security role and its political role is often pretty blurry, with stability being the top priority in both cases. And the organization's embrace of this election is certainly exhibit A.
Joshua Kucera, a senior correspondent, is Eurasianet's former Turkey/Caucasus editor and has written for the site since 2007.
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