Kazakhstan President Set to Win Fifth Term, Even as Economy Falters

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/world/asia/kazakhstan-president-nursultan-nazarbayev-election.html

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MOSCOW — Voters in Kazakhstan were set to re-elect an incumbent on Sunday who has ruled the country since the Soviet Union collapsed, in an election that could have only one outcome.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, 74, will win his fifth straight term in a snap presidential election as voters headed to the polls in droves on Sunday. According to The Associated Press, election officials said on Monday that Mr. Nazarbayev had taken 97.7 percent of the vote. The country’s elections commission said turnout was higher than 95 percent.

The election was called in February, seen as a move by Mr. Nazarbayev to win a vote of confidence as Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest country, faces a daunting economic slowdown from the collapse in oil prices and regional instability because of the crisis in Ukraine.

Mr. Nazarbayev, who has taken a title meaning “father of the nation,” has built a cult of personality and created a political system with little room for dissent. The main intrigue in Sunday’s vote was not who would win, but why the early election was held at all.

“This has been quite a year for the Kazakhs,” said Alexander A. Cooley, a professor at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and an expert on Central Asia. “In times of political uncertainty, you reaffirm some traditional moorings and foundations of the political system.”

Mr. Nazarbayev will receive his new mandate as Kazakhstan’s growth is expected to stall from the slowdown in the Russian economy and cut-rate oil prices. In January, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development cut the country’s growth outlook for 2015 to just 1.5 percent from 5.1 percent. Prices for consumer goods are rising, producers are having trouble competing with Russian rivals and the Central Bank is rumored to be considering a new devaluation of the tenge, the national currency. (The tenge lost 19 percent of its value in a single day in a devaluation last year.)

“I think the government was concerned that if the economy goes down, then there could be a protest electorate,” said Nargis Kassenova, the director of the Central Asian Studies Center at Kimep University in Almaty, the country’s largest city. “So to have nice figures, to get really good numbers for the leadership without manipulating the vote too much, I think they held the vote this year.”

The fallout from the conflict in Ukraine has left Kazakhstan wary about the potential of its neighbor Russia to sow discord among the country’s ethnic Russian minority, who make up a quarter of the population.

The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, sent a chill through the Kazakh political elite last August, when asked whether a “Ukraine scenario” of revolution and regional separatism could play out in Kazakhstan.

Mr. Putin lavished backhanded praise on Mr. Nazarbayev, suggesting that the aging leader “would never go against the will of his own people.”

“He created a government on a territory where there was never government before,” Mr. Putin added in his remarks. “The Kazakhs had never had government. He created it.”

As Mr. Nazarbayev prepares for his fifth term, the lack of an obvious heir has become increasingly obvious. Mr. Nazarbayev has not said who would succeed him, and several prospects, including Rakhat Aliyev, a former son-in-law, have passed in and then out of favor.

“On the one hand, this is how he stays in power because people don’t see an alternative,” Ms. Kassenova said. “But on the other hand, what’s next? There is a great deal of uncertainty.”

In an opinion piece published in The Financial Times last week, Mr. Nazarbayev portrayed Kazakhstan as a country navigating the difficult path from despotism to democracy.

“This remains the main condition for the sustainable development of our country and completing the large-scale tasks of modernizing our economy and society,” Mr. Nazarbayev said, favoring a gradual approach.

As he left a polling booth after voting on Sunday, Mr. Nazarbayev said he was “confident that Kazakhstanis will vote for stability in our state.”