These words are from no one less than political aide of the president Ermukhamet Ertysbayev (via FT). He says that all 16 regional hokims were briefed not to interfere with a free and fair election process this coming Sunday.

Taken that President Nazarbayev’s poll rating stands almost unchallengeably at above 60%, plus the fact that the country wants to hold the OSCE presidency in 2009, the Kazakh government will try to make sure that the very same organisation’s report reads well and smoothly.

Some diplomats accept claims that the president wants a free poll. Mr Nazarbayev, they say, craves international legitimacy.

But as with almost all other elections in the FSU, the real challenge to free and fair elections lies before the actual polling day. Also in Kazakhstan, the run up to the ballot was overshadowed by biased and lopsided media coverage of the candidates (favouring the incumbent), and incidents of violence towards opposition media outlets.

Zharmakhan Tuyakbai, the leading opposition candidate, says he faces the “standard range” of post-Soviet electoral chicanery: seizure of opposition newspapers, limited access to state-controlled TV, mysterious cancellations of venues or planes for campaign rallies.

James’s post on a mysterious suicide couldn’t fit more in here.

Nevertheless, there are no signs that Nazarbayev won’t win Sunday’s poll, and most probably, the elections will technically be the most free ever held in Kazakhstan. Will Kazakhstan follow through on promised reforms during another seven years of Nazarbayev, though? One of the points mentioned most frequently is parliamentary reform, already discussed on this blog here. According to the FT article (see link above), “[a] bigger question may be whether Mr Nazarbayev will follow through on promised political reforms, enlarging parliament and its powers, if he does win”.

Enlarging the powers of the parliament? I thought Nazarbayev had already precluded this option. Well, if he has changed his mind, he might want to read this draft document written by a Canadian parliamentarian.

Two points in that document are quite telling:

(3) Developing/strengthening a management board for the Parliament
Neither the secretary general of the lower house (the Marjolis) nor the Senate showed much interest in developing a management board. Both stated that the Presidential Administration controls the allocation of all resources for the Parliament, down to supplying pens and pencils. This was unlikely to change in the near future.
(4) Strengthening the Parliament’s human resource framework.
No interest was shown in this area.

So, while we could expect a relatively large degree of further economic reform, the culture of politics is not set to change for the time being. In the words of Yevgeni Volk, the head of the Moscow office for the Washington-based Heritage Foundation (via VOA):

“(President) Nazarbayev is not interested in changing the situation in introducing some new kind of reforms. He’s not so much open toward western-style democracy. He’s not interested in developing civil society in the country,” he noted. “So, I believe that there will be some kind of combination between relatively-free market economy which could be very attractive to investors and a tough political situation, whereby the opposition would have a very limited voice, very limited impact inside the country.”