The president of Kazakhstan, Kasim Jomart Tokayev, is the favorite to consolidate his dominance of the country in this Sunday’s presidential elections, in which he hopes to revalidate his mandate for seven more years.
Tokayev is running for seven more years at the head of the country after the constitutional amendment that increases the term of office by two years from the original five, and he is running against five candidates who have no chance of winning.
«Today is a very important, historic day,» the president said after casting his vote at the Schoolchildren’s Palace in the capital, Astana.
«We voted for a bright future for our country. This year has been easy, but our people have united and ended up overcoming all difficulties. Now we face very ambitious goals and tasks. There is a lot of work to be done. Political reforms are underway,» he added in comments reported by the ‘Astana Times’.
Kazakhstan faces a reform process after a major wave of protests over fuel price hikes in early 2022 that were violently suppressed and eventually contained with the deployment of a Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) contingent.
So far, by midday local time, 38.5 percent of the population had voted, according to National Election Commission data, and no incidents were reported.
Tokayev, 69, ended Nursultan Nazarbayev’s three-decade rule in 2019 in an election marked by police violence in which he won 70.96 percent of the vote. Following strong protests in January, former President Nazarbayev resigned from his post in the Security Council and left the secretariat of the ruling party.
International observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will give their verdict on the elections this coming Monday.
