Kazakhstan Votes for a New Single-Chamber Parliament as Tokayev Consolidates Control

Kazakhstan holds parliamentary elections on Sunday under a constitution that took effect on July 1 and replaced the two-chamber parliament with a single body, the Kurultai. Its 145 deputies are elected for five years from party lists in one nationwide district, with seven parties competing and about 12.6 million of the country's roughly 20 million people eligible to vote.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the vote begins a new period and marks the starting point for further reforms. Deutsche Welle described the same process as a continued concentration of power in the presidency, and said the government will have to maintain a difficult balance between the European Union, Russia and China whatever the result. Bloomberg reported that the election reinforces Tokayev's reform of the political system that followed the deadly unrest of January 2022, which he called an attempted coup.

Kazakhstan matters to investors for reasons that have little to do with its legislature. It exports most of its crude through a pipeline that crosses Russian territory to the Black Sea, it hosts large Western-operated oilfields, and it is the main land bridge for Chinese freight moving west. Each of those depends on the government keeping three relationships in working order at once.