Kazakhstani presidential election, 2011
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Early presidential elections were held in Kazakhstan on 3 April 2011, having been originally scheduled for 2012.
The elections were called after a plan for holding a referendum to increase president term limits to 2020 was rejected by the Constitutional Council.
Nazarbayev was re-elected for a third term with 95% of the votes and 90% turnout, against three nominal candidates. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has complained about a lack of transparency and competition in the vote.
Kazakhstan was reported at the 132nd place over 167 on The Economist's Democracy Index for 2010, as an authoritarian regime.
A referendum on extending presidential term limits was proposed to be held around March 2011. President Nursultan Nazarbayev's term was due to expire in 2012 and the referendum would have bypassed the next two scheduled elections. A Kazakh official stated that the move would "help save our efforts and resources since everyone knows the outcome of the elections beforehand." It would have been the second referendum on extending Nazarbayev's term in office, the first in 1995 having extended his term until 2000, whilst in 2007 parliament amended the electoral law to allow candidates to run without term limits.
Although Nazarbayev rejected the proposal, it would still have gone ahead if 80% of the members of the parliament (100% controlled by his party) voted for it, or if a public petition obtained at least 200,000 signatures. Media reports suggested that a petition for the referendum had already been signed by 2,600,000 people.
On 31 January the Constitutional Council rejected the referendum proposal for a Constitutional amendment aimed at extending Nazarbayev's term till 2020, on the ground that the amendment did not specify for how long and how many times the Presidential term could be extended. The Court therefore referred the matter to the President himself, as required by the Constitution of Kazakhstan. Nazarbayev agreed on putting aside the Constitutional referendum and immediately called for an early presidential election. According to analysts, Nazarbayev may have stepped back from the plan of term extension due to negative reactions by both USA, EU and OSCE, and in order to buy five years time to settle succession issues.
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