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Comment by codeshaman | Hacker News Reader

> The people of Kazakhstan can achieve the same outcome.

Highly unlikely. From Wikipedia: In April 2015, Nazarbayev was re-elected with almost 98% of the vote.

That kind of tells the whole story - people are "behind" this (or rather no-one dares contradict the authorities). That country is basically owned by the Family and resistance is pretty much futile.

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In other words: it doesn't matter who is voting, what matters is who is counting the votes.

Given the highly volatile ethnic mix of Kazakhstan and the lurking destabilizing effect of foreign interests longing for abundant mineral resources, a strong majority for stability over freedom is hardly surprising. Nonetheless, 98% seems very much out of this world. But with the "right" mix of fearmongering and early divide-and-conquer intervention when a moderate opposition ist starting to organize? Certainly not unthinkable. There's so much more to a healthy democracy than not miscounting the votes.

I don't know why you're downvoted.

I agree a hundred percent. People from stable democracies tends to underestimate how afraid people can be of chaos and how easy it is for some goverment to associate democracy with chaos.

When a moderate opposition starts to organize, a non-moderate one (or one that takes advantage of ethnic fault lines) does too.

Uh...that's not what I read into a 98% election result!

You aren't the least bit suspicious about a 98% election result?

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