Kazakh President Kasim Khomart Tokayev’s Amanat Party was the most voted in Sunday’s legislative elections, according to three exit polls that gave the party around 50 percent of the vote.
According to the study of the Institute for Eurasian Integration it gives 53.46 percent of votes to the Amanat Party, followed by the Democratic Patriotic Party of the Auyl People (10.52 percent), the Respublica Party (8.9 percent), the People’s Party of Kazakhstan (6.5 percent), the Democratic Party Aq Jol (7.87 percent), the National Social Democratic Party (5.31 percent) and the Baytaq Party (3.22 percent).
A second survey by Sotsis-A/Sociological Research Institute gives the Amanat Party 54.42 percent of the vote. The other percentages are very similar, as in the study of the Institute for Democracy Research Association, all of them collected by the Astana Times portal.
The turnout was 54.19 percent, as reported at a press conference by the deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission, Konstantin Petrov. There were 6,521,860 votes out of a total of 12,035,578 registered citizens.
The Central Electoral Commission plans to publish the official results on Monday and with them the composition of the Mazhilis or Kazakh Parliament, formed by 98 members: 69 elected in party lists and 29 in nominal direct election at the rate of one seat per constituency.
Tokayev, the country’s undisputed leader, has for some time now promoted measures to encourage multipartyism, such as the reduction of the percentage of votes needed to reach Parliament from 7 to 5 percent in view of elections that will include independent candidates.
In the previous legislature, only three parties were represented and all supported President Tokayev, who was re-elected president in last November’s elections with a landslide victory, winning more than 80 percent of the vote without any real opposition.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
