Comment on Kazakhstan goes to polls as president expected to win

Kazakhstan goes to polls as president expected to win

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) — Voters in Kazakhstan turned out in abundance at polling stations Sunday for a presidential election guaranteed to overwhelmingly reconfirm the incumbent, who has ruled over the former Soviet republic for more than 25 years. Nursultan Nazarbayev, 74, wrote in an opinion piece before the election that the vote would give the elected president a clear mandate to lead the country through potentially troubled times. Out of the several dozen voters questioned outside a polling station at a school in the business capital, Almaty, only two declared their intent to vote for Nazarbayev's rivals and the stability message appeared to have driven home. Riding high on the back of its oil, gas and mineral wealth, Kazakhstan has posted healthy growth figures over the past two decades, with the exception of a notable blip during the global economic crisis in 2008. [...] low oil prices and the recession in neighboring Russia, a large trading partner that has been hit with international sanctions for its role in the unrest in Ukraine, are dampening performance. The weekend presidential election was preceded Thursday by a congress of the Assembly of Peoples of Kazakhstan, a talking shop devoted to cultivating national unity.

 

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