Wednesday, November 16, 2011

getting the worm

so kazakhstan's parliament is dissolved and president nazarbayev scheduled new parliamentary elections for january 15, 2012, six months earlier than they were originally scheduled. last year. nazarbayev himself was just re-elected last april, in an snap presidential election called almost two years ahead of schedule.

my question is: has kazakhstan ever held elections on schedule?

i recently read kazakhstan: unfulfilled promise, a book about the first ten years of kazakhstan's independence (next month they are celebrating 20 years of independence, so yeah, i was a little late in getting to the book). the book recounts how president nazarbayev moved up one of its first elections in the 1990s, which meant that opposition parties didn't have time to get their act together and resulted in a nice rubber-stamp parliamentary majority for the administration. i guess the trick worked so well, he just kept going with it.