The Central
Electoral Commission of Kazakhstan has released the preliminary results of the
legislative elections, held yesterday, January 15th. According to
this communication, Nur Otan has got the 80.74% of votes, while two other
parties have reached the 7% threshold for receiving seats: they are Ak Zhol,
recently revamped as liberal pro-business formation, and the People's Communist
Party of Kazakhstan (with 7.46% and 7.2% respectively). The other parties,
including the Socialist Party OZDP, the Democratic Party “Adilet”, the Village Party
“Auyl” and the “Party of Patriots”, received between the 0.66% and the 1.59% of
votes, and are therefore not eligible for parliamentary seats [1]. According to
the preliminary results on turnout, 75.1% of the people inscribed in electoral
lists have voted. In the cities of Almaty and Astana the percentage was much
lower than in the rest of the country (41.4% and 53.3% respectively) [2].
The results are not
quite surprising, especially as the result of the party of power is concerned. The vote confirms the dominant position of
Nur Otan (The Fatherland’s Light), which enjoys huge popular support and is the
only one which can boast branches even in the most remote corners of the
country.
The capillary
presence on the territory is only one of the benefits of the party’s dominant
position and privileged relation with state institutions. This ability of
politicians or parties to use their official positions or connections to
government institutions to achieve party objectives is
sometimes referred to as “administrative resources” (adminresurs in Russian) by
political scientists
[3]. Resources include funding, support networks on regional
level, personnel and structures of administration, relations with business
people, as well as privileged access to state media [4].
The image of the
party is also strongly associated with the figure of the country’s leader,
Nursultan Nazarbayev. Despite some oscillation, President Nazarbayev enjoys
huge personal popularity in the country. Mostly, the reason for such reputation
is the association (helped by effective PR campaigns) of the president’s rule
with the relative political stability and the steady economic growth that the
country has enjoyed since independence. The actually impressive growth and
political balance look even more remarkable when compared with the much more difficult
situations in the other Central Asian countries. Nur Otan, rather than building
an image of its own, effectively collects on Nazarbayev’s popularity, by
declaring itself the “President’s Party” in and by using the image and the name
of the leader in every possible occasion.
While its general
popularity is undoubted, such a striking result in favour of the party of power was possible only in a context
of lack of transparency and presence of violations of the electoral rules,
observers say. According to the OSCE, despite
the authorities' ambition to strengthen democratic processes, the January 15th
vote "did not meet fundamental principles of democratic elections"
[5].
[1] See:
http://election.kz/portal/page?_pageid=73,1697139&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
[2]
http://tengrinews.kz/kazakhstan_news/205990/
[3] This
definition of “administrative resources” is by Andrei Meleshevich. See his book “Party Systems
in post-Soviet countries: a Comparative Study of Political Institutionalization
in the Baltic State, Russia and Ukraine”.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
[4] For example, while there are not data available for these
elections yet, in the 2007 electoral campaign the media monitoring performed by
the OSCE indicated a significant bias in favour of the party of power, both in
time allocated and in tone of coverage, almost always neutral or positive. See:
http://www.osce.org/odihr/elections/kazakhstan/28438
[5] http://www.rferl.org/content/kazakhstan_three_parties_win_entry_to_parliament/24452861.html
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