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Kazakh president calls snap election
Source: Agencies |
November 17, 2011, Thursday
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KAZAKHSTAN'S veteran leader dissolved the lower house of parliament yesterday and called a snap election for mid-January, apparently to ensure a pluralist parliament to face burgeoning economic difficulties.
The election will dilute the ruling party's monopoly in the oil-producing country and install at least a nominal opposition presence in the one-party chamber.
Nazarbayev said society needed "a multi-party parliament" and an election campaign in the middle of next year would distract authorities from tackling a looming economic crisis.
"Events in the European Union affect us directly," he said. "European states are not only Kazakhstan's natural and important partners. They are investors and the markets for our goods."
Many analysts expect the second-placed party to be widely sympathetic to the ruling Nur Otan party and pose no direct challenge to the leadership of the former Soviet republic.
A snap parliamentary election had been widely predicted after 71-year-old President Nursultan Nazarbayev won another five years in office in a presidential vote in April. The next parliamentary election was due next August.
Nazarbayev, who has ruled for more than 20 years, held consultations on Tuesday after members of the lower house - the Mazhilis - asked him to dissolve the chamber.
He said a new parliament would equip Kazakhstan better to modernise the economy, which still depends heavily on the export of oil and metals.
The upper house, the Senate, will assume the lower house's responsibilities until a new Mazhilis is formed.
The election will dilute the ruling party's monopoly in the oil-producing country and install at least a nominal opposition presence in the one-party chamber.
Nazarbayev said society needed "a multi-party parliament" and an election campaign in the middle of next year would distract authorities from tackling a looming economic crisis.
"Events in the European Union affect us directly," he said. "European states are not only Kazakhstan's natural and important partners. They are investors and the markets for our goods."
Many analysts expect the second-placed party to be widely sympathetic to the ruling Nur Otan party and pose no direct challenge to the leadership of the former Soviet republic.
A snap parliamentary election had been widely predicted after 71-year-old President Nursultan Nazarbayev won another five years in office in a presidential vote in April. The next parliamentary election was due next August.
Nazarbayev, who has ruled for more than 20 years, held consultations on Tuesday after members of the lower house - the Mazhilis - asked him to dissolve the chamber.
He said a new parliament would equip Kazakhstan better to modernise the economy, which still depends heavily on the export of oil and metals.
The upper house, the Senate, will assume the lower house's responsibilities until a new Mazhilis is formed.
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