Incumbent Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev will face off against five relatively unknown candidates -- including, for the first time, two women -- in an early presidential election slated for next month.
The Central Election Commission said that the six candidates had officially registered for the November 20 vote by the deadline on October 21.
The five candidates that will face Toqaev -- Nurlan Auesbaev, Meiram Qazhyken, Zhiguli Dairabaev, Qaraqat Abden, and Saltanat Tursynbekova -- are relatively unknown to the public, with many critics calling them "pocket candidates" who pose little threat to Toqaev's victory.
Most noteworthy among the candidates are Abden and Tursynbekova, who follow in the footsteps of Daniya Yespayeva, who became the first female to run for president with her bid in 2019.
Tursynbekova is a human rights activist who focuses on women’s and children’s rights. Abden is a member of the National Commission for Women's Affairs, Family, and Demographic Policy, a nonstaff adviser to Astana’s mayor on social issues, and a member of the capital’s public council.
Toqaev, who has tried to position himself as reform-minded, called the early presidential election on September 1 while also proposing to change the presidential term to seven years from five years. Under the new system, future presidents will be barred from seeking more than one term.
Critics say Toqaev's initiatives have been mainly cosmetic and do not change the nature of the autocratic system in a country that has been plagued for years by rampant corruption and nepotism.
Nursultan Nazarbaev, who had run the tightly controlled former Soviet republic with an iron fist for almost three decades, chose Toqaev as his successor when he stepped down in 2019.
Though he was no longer president, Nazarbaev retained sweeping powers as the head of the Security Council. He also enjoyed substantial powers by holding the title of “elbasy,” or leader of the nation.
Many citizens, however, remained upset by the oppression felt during Nazarbaev's reign.
Those feelings came to a head in January when unprecedented anti-government nationwide protests. Those protests started over a fuel price hike and then exploded into countrywide deadly unrest over perceived corruption under the Nazarbaev regime and cronyism that allowed his family and close friends to enrich themselves while ordinary citizens failed to share in the oil-rich Central Asian nation's wealth.
Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of his Security Council role, taking it over himself. Since then, several of Nazarbaev’s relatives and allies have been pushed out of their positions or resigned. Some have been arrested on corruption charges.
In June, a Toqaev-initiated referendum removed Nazarbaev's name from the constitution and annulled his status as “elbasy.”
