10 March 2011 | 17:33

The whole world is going to monitor elections in Kazakhstan

There will be a new form of social monitoring and control at the forthcoming presidential elections in Kazakhstan. It is going to be enforced by means of Twitter and Facebook social networks, Tengrinews.kz reports. This stamen was made by Aleksey Vlasov Director General of the Moscow State University’s Information and Analysis Center for Studies of the Post-Soviet Space. “I am sure that a completely new form of social control is going to manifest itself at the coming elections. Local election commissions and Akims [mayors and governors] should be especially careful, because any violations or attempts to interfere with the elections will momentarily get publicized through the global network. Kazakhstan population is not going to be the key target for these information outbursts, but those monitoring the elections from the outside will be,” Aleksey Vlasov said at the international conference “Electoral Democracy: International Experience and Presidential Elections in Kazakhstan”. He also said that 80 percent of recommendations made by the international observers after the previous presidential elections in 2005 and parliamentary elections in 2007 have been incorporated into Kazakhstan’s legislation. “The most significant recommendation that Kazakhstan has acted upon is withdrawal from the use of Sailau electronic voting system. These changes show the tendency of Kazakhstan’s transformation towards attaining greater transparency of election processes.” Commenting chances of the presidential candidates to win the elections he said that it is impossible to find another figure in the political circles of the country who would have enjoyed a similarly sweeping support of the country’s population like Nursultan Nazarbayev does. “There is no real alternative to the incumbent president of the country. Surveying the presidential candidates one can see that there are only formal alternatives,” Vlasov said. The conference “Electoral Democracy: International Experience and Presidential Elections in Kazakhstan” took place today in the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies. Both local and foreign experts specializing in election sociology took part.

There will be a new form of social monitoring and control at the forthcoming presidential elections in Kazakhstan. It is going to be enforced by means of Twitter and Facebook social networks, Tengrinews.kz reports. This stamen was made by Aleksey Vlasov Director General of the Moscow State University’s Information and Analysis Center for Studies of the Post-Soviet Space. “I am sure that a completely new form of social control is going to manifest itself at the coming elections. Local election commissions and Akims [mayors and governors] should be especially careful, because any violations or attempts to interfere with the elections will momentarily get publicized through the global network. Kazakhstan population is not going to be the key target for these information outbursts, but those monitoring the elections from the outside will be,” Aleksey Vlasov said at the international conference “Electoral Democracy: International Experience and Presidential Elections in Kazakhstan”. He also said that 80 percent of recommendations made by the international observers after the previous presidential elections in 2005 and parliamentary elections in 2007 have been incorporated into Kazakhstan’s legislation. “The most significant recommendation that Kazakhstan has acted upon is withdrawal from the use of Sailau electronic voting system. These changes show the tendency of Kazakhstan’s transformation towards attaining greater transparency of election processes.” Commenting chances of the presidential candidates to win the elections he said that it is impossible to find another figure in the political circles of the country who would have enjoyed a similarly sweeping support of the country’s population like Nursultan Nazarbayev does. “There is no real alternative to the incumbent president of the country. Surveying the presidential candidates one can see that there are only formal alternatives,” Vlasov said. The conference “Electoral Democracy: International Experience and Presidential Elections in Kazakhstan” took place today in the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies. Both local and foreign experts specializing in election sociology took part.