Kazakhstan elections: The Kazakh people went to the polls today in snap elections called by the incumbent Nursultan Nazarbayev as he seeks to stem growing disillusionment with the country’s overall economic situation as well as with the newly-formed Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).
Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan (along with Armenia) became founder members of the EEU trading bloc on January 1 and are soon to be joined by Kyrgyzstan, but the project but has been plagued by customs and import disputes practically from the outset. In the past couple of months, Kazakhstan’s consumers’ rights watchdog has seized Russian products for “not meeting technical regulations”, including five tonnes of poultry meat and two and a half tonnes of milk. Russian mayonnaise, chocolate, butter, cheese, yoghurt, beef, sausages, canned meat and other products have also disappeared from supermarket shelves.
In response, Russian authorities last week alone refused to let nearly 60 tonnes of Kazakh cheese into its territory, and other Kazakh dairy products have been seized for “not meeting quality and safety requirements.”
Just over 9.5m voters have the mandate to cast their votes in 9,741 polling station across the country and the result could be known by around 4 am GMT tomorrow 2 7 April).
Kazakhstan elections set to return Nazarbayev despite trouble with economy and EEU
Voting in Astana 26-04-15
Source: bbc