The International Herald Tribune has an article that summarizes a lot of the issues surrounding the upcoming election. The article seems to argue that the Kazakh government is paying lip service to the elections, but in actuality cracking down on opposition groups.

I don’t really doubt that this is true, but a few things don’t quite add up. For starters, Nazarbayev has a lot to gain from convincing the international community that the elections, and not much to lose. As Ben points out, Nazarbayev isn’t in all that much danger of losing the election, so why crack down. Also, based on KZ Blog’s account of voting registration enthusiasm, the Kazakhs themselves are sure taking it seriously.

According to the IHT article, some argue that the United States is not serious about reform in Kazakhstan anyway, and is really interested in the oil:

This year the United States budgeted $15.4 million for programs to encourage democracy in another Central Asian state, Kyrgyzstan - a mostly rural, mountainous country of 5 million people where the United States maintains an air base for servicing military aircraft on missions to Afghanistan - and only $7.4 million for Kazakhstan and its 15 million people, according to State Department figures.

Could this be the answer to my question? Could it be that Nazarbayev thinks that it is only the oil that counts, and he therefore doesn’t have to make these elections fair?

Condi said this on that:

While we do have interests in terms of natural resources and in terms of the struggle against terrorism, we have in no way allowed those interests to get in the way of our open and clear defense of freedom.

If he does decide to make the elections unfair in any way, it is definitely a gamble, oil notwithstanding.