Kazakh leader brushes off poll criticism
By Mike Collett-White
ALMATY (Reuters): President Nursultan Nazarbayev cruised to victory in elections in Kazkhstan amid a storm of international criticism for his handling of the ballot.
He had brought the poll forward by nearly a year, giving challengers little time to compete, and barred a key opponent on a technicality made possible by constitutional changes he hurried through less than a year ago.
The stocky former steelworker, 58, has been in power in the former Soviet republic since Communist times and looks set to continue to rule unchallenged. Few believe he plans to make the seven-year term which begins officially on Jan. 20 his last.
"I have seen nothing that indicates to me that Nazarbayev is not going to run for life," said one Western diplomat.
Constitutional amendments pushed through in October cleared one obstacle by removing the age limit on the president.
The fact that a leader cannot run more than twice in a row need not trouble him either. Political analysts say that Nazarbayev will argue that under the present constitution, adopted in 1995, he has only been elected once.
Sergei Tereshchenko, who headed the president's election campaign, told reporters after the Jan. 10 poll that Nazarbayev would be put forward for another term in 2006.
One Western academic said the comment, after a ballot branded neither free nor fair by the United States, showed that the leadership of the vast Central Asian state was unrepentant.
"I find it hard to believe he could say that," he said. "To say it just days after the election is a slap in the face for the people and for the international community."
Nazarbayev shrugged off international dismay at his methods, telling a news briefing after the election that he had done enough to promote democracy.
"You remember the times when turnout was 99.9 percent and the vote in favor was 99.9 percent?" he said in the new capital Astana, referring to Communist-era vote-rigging.
"Well, you could say that we have allowed democracy to progress by 20 percent."
Nazarbayev won around 80 percent of the vote, ahead of Communist Party boss Serikbolsyn Abdildin's 12 percent. Abdildin dismissed the vote as a sham, saying there had been widespread falsification -- a comment some Western diplomats agreed with.
Whatever the vote means for democracy in the resource-rich steppeland state, in the short term Nazarbayev's win will be welcomed by Western businesses which have ploughed billions of dollars into the oil sector.
They want stability above all, and their activity will be crucial to helping Kazakhstan realize its dream of becoming the next Kuwait through an oil and gas boom early next century.
Among Nazarbayev's 16 million people, poverty has kept political expectations low.
Nazarbayev has a chance to partly redeem his international image with parliamentary and local elections later this year.
"We will see whether opposition parties are allowed to campaign, or whether there will be direct or indirect pressure on them not to challenge the status quo," the diplomat said.