Members of the lower chamber of the Kazakh parliament have requested President Nursultan Nazarbayev to approve the chamber's dissolution. The request was read out by MP Nurtay Sabilyanov. 53 members of parliament signed the document.
The current parliament has been in office since August 2007. According to the constitution, the next polls were to be held in August 2012. Sabilyanov says that Kazakhstan is actively discussing early elections. He mentioned a set of arguments for dissolution. Firstly, a new financial crisis is expected in 2012.
Kazakhstan needs to conclude the electoral cycle before the year starts. This will allow state structures to concentrate on counter-crisis measures.
The next parliament will be formed from at least two political parties. The state will hold its next polls in local legislative structures in 2012.
Alexey Vlasov, the Editor-in-Chief of Vestnik Kavkaza, says that it will conclude the early dissolution of the lower chamber of parliament and fulfilment of off-year polls. The process was prepared long ago. If the process is arranged by the end of November, the polls will be held in late January, because presidential and parliamentary polls cannot be held in the same year. Kazakhstan is likely to hold off-year polls in January 2012.
The expert believes that formal reasons for the off-year polls were given by Presidential Advisor Yertysbayev. The new law on parliament does not allow any party, currently the Nur Otan Party, or any other political forces to be present in the parliament. The parliament will then see changes, probably with the participation of the Ak Zhol Party, an opposition party believed to be supporting major business interests. But it is a rather conventional opposition. There were reports yesterday that the party will be transformed into an ecological movement. So there will be 2-3 other parties in the parliament, besides the Nur Otan Party.
