Kazakh President Praises Election Results

Nazarbaev voting in Astana on August 19 (ITAR-TASS) August 20, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev celebrated his party's crushing victory in the August 19 parliamentary elections, while the opposition denounced fraud on voting day.

Speaking today at a session of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan in Astana, Nazarbaev described the vote as free and fair.

"Unfortunately the other parties were not able to get over the 7 percent barrier [to get into the legislature], but we are not going to make any tragedy out of it," he said. "There have been examples time and again in world history of parliaments that were one-party ones and yet effective, especially as we are going to consider the constructive proposals of the opposition."

Preliminary results show that Nur Otan (Light of the Fatherland) won 88 percent of the vote, leaving the opposition with no seats in the Mazhilis, the lower house of parliament. Seven parties contested the vote for the 98 parliamentary seats up for grabs.

The leader of the opposition All-National Social Democratic Party, Zharmakhan Tuyaqbay, told RFE/RL's Kazakh Service that his party rejected the result as fraudulent.

"If not the majority, then many voters, in fact, supported us," Tuyaqbay said. "We shall challenge the [election] results in court. We doubt, though, that the courts will help us, but the major issue here is to raise concern. We have to inform the population about the real face of today's power holders. Only when the people realize to what extent the power holders are not just, then they will be able to wake up."

The other major opposition party issued a statement rejecting the preliminary results. Ak Zhol (Bright Path) said it will "insist on a new vote count," and it appealed to Nazarbaev "to form a commission of representatives of all political parties to check and evaluate the election returns."

According to the Central Election Commission, the All-National Social Democratic Party and Ak Zhol (Bright Path) party received 4.62 percent and 3.25 percent of the vote, respectively.

The International Election Observation Mission said the vote reflected progress but that a number of international standards were not met, in particular with regard to the vote count. The mission included monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).