Crossroads Asia | Politics | Central Asia

Kazakhstan’s Kurultai Election Looms: Is This Old Wine in a New Bottle?

The shape of the Kazakh legislature may have changed, but the politics of Kazakhstan have not necessarily been transformed. 

On August 23, Kazakh citizens will head to the polls to cast votes for the country’s new legislative body, the 145-seat unicameral Kurultai. 

The Kurultai – not to be confused with the National Kurultai, a government-civil society consultative body formed by Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in 2022 after the Qandy Qantar events and dissolved this summer – was established with the passage of the constitutional referendum in June. Named for a traditional political and military council convened by Mongol and Turkic peoples, Kazakhstan’s new Kurultai replaces its previous bicameral parliament.

The shape of the Kazakh legislature may have changed, but the politics of Kazakhstan have not necessarily been transformed. 

There are seven political parties contesting the elections following the June 12 merger of Amanat – the ruling party, formerly known as Nur-Otan – with the upstart Adilet. While opposition political parties have struggled in vain for years to obtain registration, the newly formed Adilet raced from nonexistence to registration in record time. Importantly, Aibek Dadebay, very recently the head of the presidential administration, is the party’s head. 

In the previous 98-seat lower house, the Majilis, Amanat secured 62 seats in the 2023 election. No other party came close: Auyl held eight seats, Respublica and Aq Jol held six each, the People’s Party of Kazakhstan (QHP) held five, and the Nationwide Social Democratic Party (JSDP) held four seats.

Adilet is expected to dominate in the upcoming polls. Is this just old wine in a new bottle? Perhaps. The genuine test is what comes after the election: how the new legislature operates and whether there is not just room for genuine debate but actual debate in that room. If the legislature serves, as its predecessors have, as merely a rubber stamp on the president’s projects then indeed Kazakhs will be sipping an ancient vintage once again. 

According to Kazakhstan’s Central Election Commission (CEC), as of July 23, it had registered 545 candidates for the 145 seats. The 2023 election operated under a mixed system for the first time since 2004, in which 69 seats were allocated via party-lists and 29 by constituency. This year, all 145 seats in the Kurultai will be elected via proportional representation according to party lists. This heightens the importance of parties, but absent new parties this may just serve as a non-electoral limit on who can participate in governance. 

Mere days ahead of the election, major Kazakh media outlets – those not directly under state control – are carrying very little that can be construed as election coverage. Vlast and Tengrinews, for example, both reported on the free public transport being offered on August 23 in Almaty and Astana. There are also reports on the number of election observers registered. There are few (if any) reports on the platforms being put forward by the individual parties. 

Reports in state media........

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