AFP/Astana


Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev extended his quarter-century rule over the oil-rich, ex-Soviet republic with a crushing 97.7 percent of ballots in an election where opposition parties did not field a candidate, officials said Monday.
Nazarbayev, who has run the huge Central Asian country since before the Soviet breakup in 1991, will start a fifth term. The Central Election Commission claimed a record turnout of 95.22 percent in Sunday's polls.
Speaking in the capital Astana shortly after exit polls pointed to nearly total voter support, Nazarbayev said he had a mandate for his plans to make Kazakhstan one of the thirty most developed countries in the world.
"Without this level of general trust it would be difficult to work on realising such aims. The record high turnout at the vote demonstrated the unity of Kazakhstan's people, their desire to live in a stable state and their support for the program I put forward before them," he said.
However, the deeply marginalised opposition did not have a candidate in the election. Nazarbayev tolerates little dissent and has clamped tightly down on media and civic freedoms.
The strategically located country, bordering both Russia and China, has never held an election deemed free and fair by international monitors.
His victory was celebrated in cities across the country with fireworks and flash mobs, while some babies born in hospitals on Sunday and Monday were given election-themed names.