Kazakh vote raises questions
Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan (Light of the Fatherland) party won every seat in the country’s parliamentary elections last Sunday, writes Vladimir Afanasiev.
However, the Organisation for Security & Co-operation inEurope (OSCE) said that despite making progress, the election did not fully meet international standards.
The OSCE said there was a lack of transparency in the count at more than 40% of polling stations visited.
According to official estimates, the turnout was about 65% of Kazakhstan’s 8.9 million voters.
Nur Otan received more than 88% of the vote.
None of other seven partiestaking part in the elections managed to pass a threshold of 7% of the vote needed to get into parliament, giving Nur Otan and Nazarbayev full control over the legislature.
Nazarbayev, who had earlier managed to amend the Kazkah constitution giving him the exclusive right to be elected president an unlimited number of times, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao over the weekend in the Kazakh capital in Astana.
Nazarbayev said he and his Chinese counterpart had decided to double the capacity of the existing Atasu- Alashankou oil export pipeline that joins the two countries and to build a connecting pipeline from Atasu to the existing Kenkiyak-Atyrau oil link.
The goal of the expansion is to allow Eni-led consortium, which is developing the Kashagan oilfield, to secure an another export route in addition to Russia, which is against Kazakhstan increasing its transit volumes.
Kazakhstan has also agreed to a plan to build a gas transit line on its territory from Turkmenistan to China, Nazarbayev said.
The pipeline could potentially carry production from the giant Karachaganak gas condensate field in western Kazakhstan.
The gas pipeline is expected to have a capacity of 40 billion cubic metres of gas per year, according to reports.