August 20, 2007	Monday	Sha’aban 6, 1428

ASTANA, Aug 19: Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s party won every available seat in a new parliament on Sunday after a flawed vote that the opposition said turned the clock back to totalitarian Soviet rule.

The 88.05 per cent margin of victory for Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party in Saturday’s vote came in a poll that did not meet international standards, election monitors said. The Central Asian state has never held a vote judged free and fair.

Six other parties in the poll failed to reach a seven per cent hurdle required to enter the lower house, the Mazhilis, including the main opposition All-National Social Democratic Party (ANSDP) which received 4.62 per cent of the vote.

“As an experienced observer I can tell you I have never seen a democratic country with one political party in parliament,” Lubomir Kopaj, an observer from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), told a news conference.—Reuters