Kazakhstan votes in poll seen as democratic test

Kazakhstan voted yesterday in a parliamentary election that was certain to return a big majority for President Nursultan Nazarbayev's party and is seen as a test of the Central Asian state's democracy.

The vast oil-producing country has never held a vote internationally recognised as free and fair but Nazarbayev, in power since Soviet times in 1989, wants recognition in the West as the leader of a state built on more than petrodollars.

Key to yesterday's vote was whether the opposition All-National Social Democratic Party (ANDSP) wins any seats and the verdict of election monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Preliminary results were due today at 5 a.m. GMT, the Central Election Commission said as polls closed. The OSCE will make a statement on its poll monitoring at 11 GMT.

Nazarbayev wants Kazakhstan to chair the OSCE, a 56-member democracy, rights and security body, in 2009 but has faced opposition due to his poor record on democracy.

He called the poll two years early after enacting constitutional changes that hand the lower house, the Mazhilis, more powers such as naming the prime minister, but also removed any limit on how many terms he can serve as president.

Speaking alongside visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao, he said the vote bolstered stability and, in a veiled reference to foreign critics, said reform had to be home grown.

The opposition said turnout was lowest where it had deployed observers with digital cameras and highest in rural areas, such as the region around Almaty where it stood at 79 per cent.

The party said it had gathered photographic evidence of a range of violations including multiple voting and campaign literature for Nazarbayev's Nur Otan party in polling stations, where the leader's portrait also frequently hung.

Nur Otan is widely expected to win a landslide. It dominated the previous chamber but that parliament also included nominally independent MPs, now banned.