Saturday, September 29, 2007

Kazakhstan: Elections in 2012

Nursultan Abishuly (Abishevich) Nazarbayev was born on July 6, 1940 in Chemolgan, Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union has served as the President of Kazakhstan since the Fall of the Soviet Union and the nation's independence in 1991.

In 1984 Nazarbayev became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, working under Dinmukhamed Kunayev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan He served as First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party from 1989 to 1991. While previously having atheistic views in the Soviet era, Nazarbayev has exerted effort to highlight his Muslim heritage by going on hajj, supporting mosque renovations, and at the same time attempting to combat Islamic terrorism in Kazakhstan.


Kazakhstan's president is elected by the people and serves for at most two five-year terms. Term limits were removed for the incumbent Nursultan Nazarbayev on May 18, 2007, when parliament also voted to reduce the term length from seven to five years. This, however, does not come into effect until the next Kazakh election in 2012.

Nazarbayev has been called one of "ultimate oligarchs" of the post-Soviet Central Asian states. He is believed to have transferred at least $1 billion worth of oil revenues to his private bank accounts in other countries and his family controls many other key enterprises in Kazakhstan. He is also said to have benefitted financially from his "special relations" with Kazakh-Israeli billionaire Alexander Mashkevich, who, as of 2004, was believed to control as much as one-fourth of Kazakhstan's economy.

1 comment:

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