Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev, 74, has been re-elected as the country’s president for the fifth consecutive time by securing 97.7% of the votes. The exit poll showed Nazarbayev’s closest competitor Turgun Syzdykov as scoring just 1.8 percent of the ballot. Nazarbayev was elected as prime minister in 1984 and won the first presidential election in 1991. Kazakhstan’s Central Election Commission claimed a record voter turnout of 95.11 percent for the poll.

Kazakhstan has never held an election deemed free and fair by international monitors. Observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were yet to give their assessment of the latest polls. Supporters of  Nazarbayev are celebrating by bursting crackers and distributing sweets to the people in all main streets.

Tidbits

1. Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country by land area and the ninth largest country in the world.
2. It has borders with (clockwise from the north) Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, and also adjoins a large part of the Caspian Sea.
3. The capital is Astana, where it was moved from Almaty in 1997. The currency of Kazakhstan is Tenge. 
4. The Kazakh language is the state language, while Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes.
5. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.