Kazakhstan voted yesterday in a presidential election expected to see Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose 16-year rule has turned this Central Asian giant into a major oil power, win another seven-year term.
Despite allegations of fraud, corruption and authoritarian tendencies, polling indicated that Nazarbayev, 65, should easily defeat his four opponents.
The president enjoys widespread support thanks to growing prosperity in this former Soviet backwater that has enjoyed billions of dollars of foreign investment in its Caspian Sea oil fields and is set to become a top 10 world oil producer within a decade.
"Of course I'll vote for the current president," said pensioner Margarita Alexandrova, 65, one of the first voters in the capital Astana, where polling stations opened in sub-zero temperatures and pre-dawn darkness.
"Nazarbayev inspires confidence. The opposition does not."
Kazakhstan, roughly the size of western Europe or India and once part of Genghis Khan's empire, has never held an election judged free and fair by Western observers.
The opposition complains that media bias and pressure from the authorities skewed the election campaign, and on Sunday leading opposition candidate Zharmakhan Tuyakbai reported attempts to tamper with the electronic voting system in provincial areas.
However, Nazarbayev, voting at a polling station set up in an Astana theater, said: "These elections will be more democratic than ever before."
He also predicted that Kazakhstan "will be one of the 50 most developed countries in the world."
After three hours of voting, turnout reached about 10 percent of the 8.6 million eligible voters, election authorities said.
Nazarbayev's main challengers were Tuyakbai, who is a former prosecutor general and ex-parliament speaker, and former labour minister Alikhan Baimenov.
Also running were Mels Yeleusizov of the environmentalist Tabigat movement and Yerasyl Abilkasymov of the People's Communist Party.
Tuyakbai, who has previously warned that Nazarbayev is dragging Kazakhstan toward dictatorship, was upbeat as he voted in his hometown of Almaty, the country's largest city. "This is a day of hope and freedom," Tuyakbai, 58, said.
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