BACKGROUND: In July, President Nazarbayev confirmed he would run for another term as president of Kazakhstan. The move was controversial, since under the constitution an individual may only hold office for two consecutive terms, but Nazarbayev argued that since the constitution was only passed after he was already in office, his first term didn’t count. Surprisingly, although the opposition is now voicing complaints about the move, there was barely a ripple during the summer when Nazarbayev made his announcement. Nazarbayev was first elected in 1990 for a five-year term. He has extended his tenure through referendums on two occasions, the last in 1999 when he added an additional two years to the presidential term. One Kazakh journalist noted that under the circumstances, if Nazarbayev wins this election, it is not even his third term as president, but will take him into what should be his fifth term. Initially, seventeen candidates announced their intention to run in the elections. This number dwindled down to five, including Nazarbayev. Five were disqualified for not showing sufficient knowledge of the Kazakh language; another five were disqualified for failing to collect the requisite number of signatures; and two withdrew their nominations. The four remaining challengers have each chosen rather uninspired themes for their campaigns. Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, the candidate of the movement For A Just Kazakhstan (an umbrella organization for several opposition parties), is the favored challenger with opinion polls showing a support level of around 17 percent. He has based his campaign on justice and fairness—not a particularly revolutionary platform. Despite this rather straightforward set of campaign issues, his program runs 34 pages, prompting one commentator to ask if he seriously expected people to plough through 34 pages to figure out what he stood for. The other contenders include Alikhan Baimenov, leader of the opposition party Ak Zhol. Baimenov issued a smaller, 12-page booklet on his platform. Again, much of it is the usual populist fare about raising salaries, reforming the agricultural sector, and the unity of the nation. The wildcard candidate is Yerasyl Albykasymov, representing the People’s Communist Party—an offshoot of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, whose split was allegedly encouraged by the ruling powers to take votes away from Tuyakbai and Baimenov. Albykasymov is regarded as a populist and has the most appeal because of his lively style, when compared to Tuyakbai or Baimenov. Mels Eleusizov is running on an environmental platform—not a very controversial stand since everyone agrees protecting the environment is good.

IMPLICATIONS: The incumbent Nazarbayev has based his campaign on the theme of stability. Every evening, the television station KTK (owned by Nazarbayev’s son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev) runs a song about the unity of the nation showing all of Kazakhstan’s ethnic groups happily getting along. When the state-owned, or Nazarbayev family-owned media, shows footage of events in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, which had a colored revolution earlier in the year, it is portrayed as a chaotic place without order. The Kyrgyz themselves have expressed disgust at the coverage of their country. On the domestic front, Nazarbayev has been stressing progress, with the slogan “Tolka vpered” (Only Forward). The themes of stability and progress appear sufficient to ensure Nazarbayev wins, despite scandals surrounding the distribution of contracts in the country’s energy sector, or complaints about his eldest daughter’s, Dariga, and her husband’s monopoly of the country’s media. Support for Nazarbayev stems from a number of factors. First, Kazakhs genuinely feel they are better off than people in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan or the neighboring Russian oblasts. The trickle-down effect of foreign investment in the country is evident. Cars in the major cities are newer, western models, with Russian-made Ladas turning into endangered species in Almaty and Astana. This new affluence is not limited to a small elite. A middle class is apparent in all of the major cities. Thus, even though poverty persists in the country, a sizable sector has a respectable standard of living, which makes people less hostile to the incumbent than they were in Kyrgyzstan, and less likely to seek any radical changes. Another factor driving support for Nazarbayev is that many of the newly rich and middle classes, as well as foreign companies working in Kazakhstan (mostly in the energy sector), worry that a change of leadership could affect their positions. Judicial independence is not well established in Kazakhstan (Nazarbayev can not only appoint judges, but also dismiss them), and so the entire economic and political system could be shaken up if a radically new leadership takes control. This is particularly true with regard to privatization deals under Nazarbayev, which are widely perceived to have involved personal deals with the president. Thus, it is in the interest of these groups to keep Nazarbayev in office, since he is the only guarantee for protecting their contracts and properties. Finally, Kazakhs genuinely credit Nazarbayev with having maintained stability in the country when separatism threatened in the northern oblasts in the early years of independence, and with maintaining Kazakhstan’s independence as a Kazakh state. They also give him credit for having managed relations with the country’s two powerful neighbors—Russia and China—and also for not having resorted to violent government crackdowns as in Uzbekistan.

CONCLUSIONS: None of the opposition candidates pose a real threat to Nazarbayev, who appeals to the country’s strong desire for stability and his record for economic improvement, which has been helped by the high oil prices in recent years. Media loyal to the President have also made a concerted effort to show that nothing good has come from the colored revolutions in Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Georgia. The negative perception of the revolutions was well illustrated when Nazarbayev told reports that anyone accusing the government of corruption should “Go to Kyrgyzstan and see where things are really bad.” There is some concern that Nazarbayev may be hard pressed to carry the vote in the old capital Almaty—the hotbed of opposition movements and NGOs. Nonetheless, his popularity in many other parts of the country is genuine, and the fears of the new middle and wealthier classes of any re-privatization as they see happening in Ukraine are so strong that many believe their best prospects lie with the incumbent.

AUTHORS’ BIO: Ustina Markus is an associate professor and Nigmet Ibaldildin is a senior lecturer at the Kazakh Institute for Management, Economics and Strategic Research (KIMEP) in Almaty. Ryan Kennedy is a PhD student at Ohio State University doing field research for his dissertation in Kazakhstan.