Kazakhstan names presidential candidates
According to Itar-Tass, those candidates will compete with the acting President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who is the twelfth candidate and the only one registered officially for the early presidential election due on April 3, Head of the Central Elections Commission Kuandyk Turgankulov said on Thursday.
The commission got applications from 22 presidential aspirants. They took an obligatory examination in the state language, Kazakh, and following the results of those the commission decided whether or not an aspirant answers the knowledge requirements.
"Out of 22 aspirants, three were nominated by political parties, one - by a civil union, where 18 aspirants are men and four - women," he said. "21 aspirants have a higher education and one - college."
"The aspirants include the acting president, a deputy of the parliament, one official, five staff members of civil unions, two retirees, four temporary unemployed," he continued. "Seven of them were nominated for the presidential election of 2005."
The linguistics commission reports that five candidates did not pass the language examination.
"For this reason the Central Elections Commission refused to register them as presidential candidates," he said.
One aspirant refused to take the examination, and two more rejected their nomination on their own.
All the candidates, who comply with the legal requirements, have got lists to collect signatures in support of the aspirants. Every candidate will have to collect minimum 91,000 signatures representing all 16 regions of the country. Trustees will organise collecting signatures. The filled in lists are to be presented to the local elections commission.
Nominees of three political parties will continue the presidential campaign: acting President Nursultan Nazarbayev from the Nur Otan Party, Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee Zhambyl Akhmetbekov and Senator Gani Kasymov from the Party of Patriots. Another aspirant for presidency, leader of the Zheltoksan /December/ patriotic movement, filed an application on the last day of the nominations period. Self-nominated aspirants will collect signatures, too.
For the official registration, which is over on March 2, all aspirants will have to present the signatures lists and to transfer to the Central Elections Commission about 800,000 tenge /about 5,000 dollars/, as well as to file in their income and property declarations. The election campaign will start on March 3 to be over on April 1, two days before the voting.