Kazakhstan: In Nazarbayev we trust

Kazakhstan's ruler-of-a-quarter-century, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, seemed quite pleased today with himself in view of the results of yesterday's election that show him win re-election with a modest 97.7%. Turnout wasn't that bad either, what with 95.2% showing up and casting their allocated, pre-selected vote for president Nazarbayev, which only proves, he said, of the Kazakhs stellar political (mono)culture. He did feel the need though to apologize to western "super-democracies" for the admittedly large margin of his sweeping victory, saying that he can't help it if he is so popular and that he could not of course intervene to lower his percentage to more palatable levels cause that would have been tampering. And vote tampering is something he would never do. Vote bribing, opponent tampering & media manipulation on the other hand, well, that's a different story.

Western democracies were not the only ones to rain on Nazarbayev's festive victory parade; newly elected Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, said that his winning comparatively only 94% of the vote in his Sudan's presidential election was a sobering experience which would make him reconsider the country's vote-rigging procedures.