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A Note on the Presidential Elections of 10 January 1999
in the Republic of Kazakhstan
by Rafis Abazov
The early elections of 10 January 1999 in the Republic of Kazakhstan became one of the most controversial elections among the democratic and semi-democratic regimes of the CIS. These elections were sharply criticised by the international community, including OSCE and human rights groups, and by the local opposition. However, if we put aside criticism of the electoral procedure, we can note that important trends took place in the transformation of the political systems in the former Soviet republics after they gained independence in December 1991. In this regard, the presidential elections in Kazakhstan have presented a unique example of such a transformation.
Background
The evolution of Kazakhstan's political system during the last few years of the USSR was in many ways reminiscent of the evolution of the political system in the Russian Federation. In 1990, some changes to the constitution of Kazakhstan were adopted, including the introduction of a post of the President. In April 1990 the Parliament of the republic elected N.Nazarbayev as the President of Kazakhstan. On 1 December 1991 he was re-elected, as the only candidate, by an all-republican vote. Nazarbayev easily obtained an overwhelming majority of 95.5%, and on 16 December 1991 he declared the independence of Kazakhstan from the USSR.
Following this Nazarbayev adopted a policy aimed at creating a regime of 'presidential democracy', which was similar to the Latin American presidential regimes. In the latter the President, who was not affiliated with any political organisations or parties, relied mostly on 'technicos', i.e. a group of technocratic-oriented reformers, as well as on a strong state machine. The objective of this policy was to support the President in his attempts to transform Kazakhstan into a Central Asian 'snow leopard' (similar to economic 'Tigers' of South-East Asia).
In the initial stages of independence in Kazakhstan, like in Russia, strong President was counterbalanced by a strong Parliament. Initially, President Nazarbayev was inclined to promote democratisation and market reforms in the Republic. However, the democratic 'honeymoon' between the President and the Parliament ended very soon and evolved into a growing confrontation between the reform-minded President and the conservative Parliament. In the political conflict between the President and the Parliament members of the latter were defeated. The former Soviet Parliament elected in 1990 was 'voluntarily' dismissed by presidential decree in December 1993. A new 177-seat Parliament was elected on a multiparty basis on 7 March 1994, but soon afterwards it was dismissed as well by the decision of the Supreme Court that ruled the 1994 elections invalid. In August 1995 the new Constitution was adopted, and in December 1995 a new two-chamber Parliament was elected. The powers of this Parliament were severely reduced.
The political conflict between the President and the Parliament, accompanied by a looming economic crisis and mistakes made in mass privatisation, severely damaged the popularity of Nazarbayev. It was widely predicted that the President might lose his office in next presidential elections. In 1995, Nazarbayev undertook political action that seriously undermined his image as a reformer and a democratic leader: he cancelled presidential elections scheduled for 1996. On 29 April 1995 he conducted an early referendum that prolonged his term of presidency until December 2000 (within the CIS similar action was undertaken only by President of Uzbekistan).
Calculations and Strategies
However, the political situation in the Republic remained quite tense even after the parliamentary elections and the 1995 referendum. Growing popular dissatisfaction with the widespread corruption, abuses in the process of mass privatisation, and shock therapy that was implemented under recommendations of the IMF, forced the President to consider a series of radical steps. In order to broaden his political support, especially from ethnic minorities, he strengthened further his emphasis on the 'policy of economic growth', rather than on nationalism, and announced a 'technocratic program' of transition which was named "Kazakhstan 2030".
In October 1998, President Nazarbayev unexpectedly issued a decree which proposed a number of amendments to the Constitution. On 8 October 1998 a joint session of the upper and lower houses of the Parliament of Kazakhstan voted in favour of early presidential elections that were to be held on 10 January 1999.
The electoral rules established tough conditions for the candidates. First of all, candidates were required by 30 November 1998 to collect 170,000 signatures of their supporters and to pay a registration fee of 2.4 million tenge (US $31,000). Second, candidates were to sit for a Kazakh language test. Third, the candidates had to be able to prove that they had no record of criminal or administrative offences.
Former Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin together with the former leader of the 'Azamat' movement, Mourat Auezov, potentially had the strongest chances in the elections. Both were able to mobilise significant financial resources for the election campaign and were widely known as strong politicians. However, the Supreme Court rejected the registration of both candidates on the grounds of their recent convictions for participating in illegal political meetings.
In the end, besides Nazarbayev, there were three other candidates registered. One was Serikbolsyn Abdildin who represented the Communist Party and until 1994 was the speaker of the Parliament. The other was Engels Gabbasov, a member of the Parliamentary Commission on foreign relations, defence and security, who represented the democratic forces. And the third candidate was General Gani Kasymov, Chairman of the State Customs Committee, who had a 'patriotic' programme and called for an establishment of order in the country.
The biggest puzzle of the election campaign is why an experienced politician like Nazarbayev decided to tarnish his political reputation through limiting his political opposition. I think we can find the answer if we analyse recent elections in other post-Soviet states. According to the view of Kazakhstan's presidential advisers, in a number of recent important elections that took place in the CIS, incumbent presidents had lost their office. This happened to Kravchuk in Ukraine and Shushkevitch in Belorussia in 1994. On the other hand, the Kazakhstan's elite widely perceived the Russian presidential elections as fraudulent elections, which were accompanied by a high level of political gambling. Due to the fact that such gambling was not possible in the fragile political situation that existed in the Republic, Kazakhstan's ruling elite decided to follow a Kyrgyzstan model which was effectively used during the December 1995 presidential elections.
The Outcome
According to the results provided by the electoral committee, the elections in Kazakhstan were indicative of a high level of political activity of the people: 86.28% of voters turned out at the polls on 10 January 1999. Nazarbayev won the elections by a large margin. The vote distribution between the four candidates is presented in Table 1.
Although members of independent monitoring agencies noticed certain violations in the electoral process, they did not find any serious breaches, which would allow them to claim elections to be a total falsification.
In assessment of the results of these elections we should note several important features. First, the Communist alternative in Kazakhstan does not have the level of support that Communists traditionally enjoy in Russia. In Kazakhstan the Communists got only 12% of the vote, while in the Russian presidential elections of 1996 Communist leader G.Zyuganov received 32% of votes in the first round and 40.2% in the second round.
Second, the 'technocratic model' and the proclaimed programme of reforms makes Nazarbayev's regime rather different from the regimes that exist in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as well as in Russia. Nazarbayev does not breach the democratic procedure and does not tend to eliminate the political opposition, like for example President Niazov in Turkmenistan. Rather he limits this 'procedure' within a certain framework and his 'rules of the game'.
Third, his policy aimed at reaching compromises with different social, ethnic, tribal and political groups, together with the moderate technocratic programme of reforms allow Nazarbayev to broaden the social and political base of his support. His political flexibility allowed him to attract wide support in Kazakhstan, including the majority of votes of the Russian ethnic community.
Fourth, in contrast to Russia, Kazakhstan has no established middle class, lacks strong democratic institutions and does not have an established democratic tradition. For this reason the political establishment in Kazakhstan is evolving towards a regime, which is quite similar to Latin American regimes of tecnicos ('delegative democracies' if we use terminology of G.O'Donnell) or the authoritarian regime of the French Republic which existed under the rule of General De Gaulle.
Footnotes available in the printed version only.