Kazakhstan’s main opposition party has held a small rally in Almaty, calling for the results of the January 15 parliamentary election to be annulled and a new election held this August. While the opposition was standing out in the cold, authorities had blocked another critical website run by one disqualified opposition candidate.
The OSDP party was shut out of parliament after failing to clear the 7-percent electoral threshold to win seats. The ruling Nur Otan party won a landslide, but opposition leaders – backed by international observers – say the vote was rigged.
Election day “was a black day in the calendar of the whole history of Kazakhstan,” OSDP deputy leader Amirzhan Kosanov told a crowd of less than a hundred supporters gathered on Almaty’s Republic Square in a blizzard. “On that day democracy was killed, just as in Zhanaozen our peaceful citizens were killed with machine guns.”
Kosanov was referring to mid-December unrest in western Kazakhstan, when at least 17 protestors were shot dead.
The OSDP, the only genuine opposition party in an election which saw most dissident voices excluded, said the results should be annulled – a call Astana is certain not to heed.
“We believe this parliament is illegal,” said OSDP co-leader Bolat Abilov, who was struck from the ballot ahead of the vote. He accused Astana of having “stolen millions of votes,” and President Nursultan Nazarbayev – in power for over two decades – of “taking us into a blind alley, a catastrophe.”
“Kazakhstan today is a state in which a [legitimate] ruling power does not exist,” said Guljan Yergaliyeva, another prominent OSDP candidate disqualified along with Abilov. “What exists is a mafia that calls itself a ruling power.”
The news website run by Yergaliyeva -- Guljan -- was blocked in Kazakhstan after she published a diatribe against Astana following the announcement of the election results.
Final results released on January 17 showed little change from preliminary figures. Three parties loyal to Astana got into parliament: Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan with 81 percent of the vote, Ak Zhol with 7.5 percent, and the Communist People’s Party of Kazakhstan (KNPK) with 7.2 percent. OSDP lagged with 1.7 percent.
OSDP leaders plan to stage another protest on January 28, pledging to march through downtown Almaty.
Joanna Lillis is a journalist based in Almaty and author of Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan.
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