Presidential election fell short of international standards - OSCE

Despite improvements in the election process prior to Sunday's presidential polls in Kazakhstan, the elections failed to meet international standards for democratic elections, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observation mission said on Monday. "Regrettably, despite some efforts which were undertaken to improve the process, the authorities did not exhibit sufficient political will to hold a genuinely good election that is in line with international standards," Bruce George, head of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and coordinator for the short-term election observers, said in a statement. While candidates' registration was mostly inclusive and gave voters a choice, undue restrictions on campaigning, harassment of campaign staff and persistent and numerous cases of intimidation by the authorities, limited the possibility for meaningful competition, according to the OSCE's preliminary findings report. Around 460 observers from 43 countries were present on election day in a joint undertaking of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the Parliamentary Assemblies of the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. The statement came several hours after the Kazakh Central Election Commission (CEC) reported on Monday that incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the energy-rich Central Asian state since it was part of the Soviet Union, was re-elected with an overwhelming majority. The CEC said Nazarbayev had won 91 percent of the votes, according to the count completed early on Monday, while his closest challenger and main opposition candidate, Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, received 6.64 percent. Alikhan Baimenov, another candidate, came in third with 1.65 percent - 77 percent of registered voters cast ballots. The voting was generally calm and peaceful, but the process deteriorated during the count, which was viewed as bad or very bad in one out of four counts observed, the OSCE maintained. "Active participation clearly shows the interest and hopes of the Kazakh people in the development of a democratic society. However, the high attendance, and in some cases overcrowding in polling stations, hindered the voting process and the secrecy of the vote," Tadeusz Iwinski, head of the observer delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said. Unauthorised persons interfering in polling stations, cases of multiple voting, ballot box stuffing and pressure on students to vote were observed during voting and during the count, observers saw tampering with result protocols and a wide range of procedural violations, the OSCE report read. "There were violations in terms of voters' lists and there were problems with electronic voting," Amangeldy Shormanbayev, a human rights activist who monitored the election for the local Republican Network of Independent Monitors (RNIM), said from the Kazakh commercial capital of Almaty. "In some polling stations when voters cast their ballots electronically, the system voluntarily voted for them making the choice on its own," Shormanbayev added, noting that many voters complained about that issue. Meanwhile, the For a Fair Kazakhstan opposition alliance said that the whole election process had been marked with gross violations of the country's constitution and laws by the authorities. "President Nazarbayev and his entourage neither held 'free and fair elections' as they promised nor even were able to create an illusion of that," the group said. "This gives us a right to state that the election results were flawed."