People are still casting their ballots in Kazakhstan, where President Nazarbayev is so confident he’ll win another 7-year term that he’s already organised the party:

Amid allegations of official and opposition misdeeds, Nazarbayev is so confident of victory over his four challengers that he has scheduled a gathering with supporters at a sports complex in the capital Astana on Monday morning, just minutes after election officials plan to announce preliminary results.

There is already a semi-excuse in case not everything goes according to plan:

Central Election Commission chairman Onalsyn Zhumabekov claimed this month that purported election observers had prepared statements alleging voting violations that they would submit to cast doubt on the poll’s legitimacy.

Here in London, the Caspian Information Center (which has sent their own team of observers to Kazakhstan) is slated to publish their verdict on the elections on Monday. Also, the OSCE will announce their impressions during a press conference tomorrow.

The OSCE could be too critical in its assessment than to let Kazakhstan head the organisation in 2009:

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which will monitor the elections with 465 observers, directed criticisms towards the Kazakh administration. The organization claimed only a few articles from the “correction list” were realized, which they sent to the Kazakh administration to hold elections in the international level.

More soon.