Kazakhstan will hold parliamentary and local elections on the 10th January. There is little intrigue as to the results given that opposition parties were not allowed to participate. New regulations that restrict election observers have further enhanced state control over the voting process. These developments disappointed many Kazakhstani citizens, who previously had hoped President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s promises of political reform would prove more forthcoming.

Please join the Central Asia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Davis Center at Harvard University, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs for a discussion on the elections, immediate reactions inside and outside the country on the results, and also the implications for the immediate and future development of Kazakhstan.

About the Speakers

Nargis Kassenova is a Senior Fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies of Harvard University, and Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations and Regional Studies of KIMEP University. Her areas of research include Central Asian politics and security, Eurasian geopolitics, Kazakhstan’s foreign policy, religion and politics in Central Asia, and history of state-building in Central Asia.

Yevgeniy Zhovtis is a prominent human rights lawyer and the current director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, as well as a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Assembly and the board of the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute. Zhovtis has been the recipient of numerous human rights awards, including the EU and U.S. Democracy and Civil Society Award in 1999, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Human Rights Award in 2007, and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee Andrey Sakharov Freedom Award in 2010.

Torokul Doorov has been the Director of RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service since July 2014. He started his career with RFE/RL as a Moscow-based correspondent in 2002. Later he worked as the Kyrgyz Service’s Azattyk Plus youth program editor for several years in Bishkek. Born in the Batken region of Kyrgyzstan, he graduated from the Journalism Faculty of Moscow State University.

Marlene Laruelle, Moderator

Marlene Laruelle, Ph.D., is Director, Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; Director, Central Asia Program; Co-Director, PONARS-Eurasia; and Research Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University. She works on political, social and cultural changes in the post-Soviet space. Marlene's research explores the transformations of nationalist and conservative ideologies in Russia, nationhood construction in Central Asia, as well as the development of Russia’s Arctic regions. She has been the Principal Investigator of several grants on Russian nationalism, on Russia’s strategies in the Arctic, and on Central Asia’s domestic and foreign policies from the US State Department, the Defense Department, the National Science Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Henry Luce Foundation, etc.