It was expected as the culmination of an unusually turbulent electoral campaign to elect the deputies of the Majlis (lower house of Parliament), and Maslikhats (local assemblies). But in Almaty, breeding ground for the opposition and economic lifeblood of Kazakhstan, voting day passed like a letter in the mail.
Traditional Kazakh music played from a laptop greeted voters at a polling station in the 3e constituency. Vestige of a Soviet tradition which wanted to make each voting day a « fête » popular. But the heart was not there: as usual, the former Kazakh capital has the lowest participation rate in the country. Barely a quarter of voters turned out.
Four years earlier, to the day, an unexpected event seemed set to change the country’s political trajectory. On March 19, 2019, former President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced that he was leaving power after almost thirty years of unchallenged reign, leaving the post of president to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, then an obscure career diplomat.
Turn the page
The choice of March 19 as the date of the parliamentary elections, the first since the “bloody January” of 2022, “sends a message to the elites and the international community: the concentration of power in the hands of Tokayev is complete”explains Shalkar Nurseïtov, political analyst and director of the Center for Policy Solutions in Kazakhstan.
The power wanted with this election to turn the page on the deadly repression of the demonstrations of January 2022, triggered by a brutal increase in energy prices. And point out that a “New Kazakhstan” emerges, more democratic and without the nepotism of the Nazarbayev era. For the first time since 2004, the electoral rules allow candidates not affiliated with a political party validated by the government to stand for election for a single majority mandate.
New opponents have rushed into the breach, to confront the political parties, all pro-government. Like Inga Imanbaï, a former journalist and human rights activist. Candidate in the 3e Almaty constituency, she is also the wife of activist Janbolat Mamaï, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, unregistered. Detained since February 2022, Janbolat Mamaï is awaiting his trial, under house arrest. He is charged with several crimes, including “violation of the procedure for organizing and holding peaceful assemblies” in January 2022, and faces up to ten years in prison.
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