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Kazakhstan kicks off presidential election
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-04 15:42

ALMATY, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Voters in Kazakhstan cast their ballots on Sunday in an election almost certain to return President Nursultan Nazarbayev to office but which the opposition has said it expects to be riddled by fraud.

The world's ninth-largest country has attracted billions of dollars of Western, Russian and Chinese investment as production from its oilfields grows, but it has never held an election judged free and fair.

"We already have the first alarming signals from the provinces where there have been a number of violations," opposition challenger Zharmakhan Tuyakbai told reporters after he voted in the biggest city Almaty.

He said his campaign had evidence of duplicate voter lists that could allow multiple voting -- a feature of past elections where monitors have reported voter list problems and pressure on state employees to vote for the government.

But in the bitterly cold and windswept new capital Astana, Nazarbayev said he had gone so far as to wind up his own campaign early to give his opponents more of a chance.

"This year's election is being held in unprecedentedly democratic conditions," the 65-year-old former Communist Party apparatchik told reporters, flanked by his wife, two of his daughters and sons-in-law.

He says his main achievement in the Central Asian state has been securing political and inter-ethnic stability in the turbulent post-Soviet years and fostering economic growth.

Voting started before dawn at 7:00 a.m. (0100 GMT) and the polls were due to close at 8:00 p.m. (1400 GMT).
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