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Kazakhstan kicks off presidential election
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-04 15:42
ALMATY, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Voters in Kazakhstan cast their ballots on Sunday
in an election almost certain to return President Nursultan Nazarbayev to office
but which the opposition has said it expects to be riddled by fraud.
The world's ninth-largest country has attracted billions of dollars of
Western, Russian and Chinese investment as production from its oilfields grows,
but it has never held an election judged free and fair.
"We already have the first alarming signals from the provinces where there
have been a number of violations," opposition challenger Zharmakhan Tuyakbai
told reporters after he voted in the biggest city Almaty.
He said his campaign had evidence of duplicate voter lists that could allow
multiple voting -- a feature of past elections where monitors have reported
voter list problems and pressure on state employees to vote for the government.
But in the bitterly cold and windswept new capital Astana, Nazarbayev said he
had gone so far as to wind up his own campaign early to give his opponents more
of a chance.
"This year's election is being held in unprecedentedly democratic
conditions," the 65-year-old former Communist Party apparatchik told reporters,
flanked by his wife, two of his daughters and sons-in-law.
He says his main achievement in the Central Asian state has been securing
political and inter-ethnic stability in the turbulent post-Soviet years and
fostering economic growth.
Voting started before dawn at 7:00 a.m. (0100 GMT) and the polls were due to
close at 8:00 p.m. (1400 GMT).
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