According to preliminary results, the incumbent Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was clearly re-elected in the presidential elections in Kazakhstan. According to the election commission, the 69-year-old received 81.31 percent of the votes today. Five largely unknown candidates ran once morest the president.
The election was originally scheduled for 2024, in September the head of state announced the early election date. In 2019, Tokayev succeeded longtime President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had ruled Kazakhstan with an iron fist for almost three decades.
During the election campaign, Tokayev had promised a “New Kazakhstan” with democratic progress and economic reforms. However, economic problems in Central Asia’s largest country persist, as do the authoritarian reflexes of the leadership.
Protests brutally suppressed
It is unclear which course Tokayev will pursue. At the beginning of the year, with the help of Russia, he had bloody suppression of domestic political unrest – by means of a shoot-to-fire once morest the demonstrators, whom he described as “terrorists”. Since then, the opposition has largely been disempowered. After that, however, Tokayev hardly sought proximity to the government in Moscow and avoided publicly supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine.