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Kazakh authorities refuse
to hold referendum on elections of governors
02/13/2002
BBC Monitoring
Source: Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, Almaty, in Russian 0924 gmt 13 Feb 02/BBC
Monitoring/(c) BBC
Excerpt from report by Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency
Astana, 13 February: The Kazakh Central Election Commission (CEC) has refused to register
a group of citizens who were going to initiate a nationwide referendum on introducing the
system of elections for akims (governors of local administrations) at all levels.
As was reported, an initiative group of 120 people submitted relevant documents to the CEC
on 4 February to be registered in order to gather people's signatures in support of
holding the referendum.
The chairwoman of the CEC, Zagipa Baliyeva, told a news conference in Astana today that
the regional election commissions had inspected the list of citizens - members of the
initiative group, and found out that the list did not correspond to reality and
contradicted the legislation.
In particular, it was found out that some of the citizens whose names were on the list had
not left for Almaty at all, others had used the opportunity of visiting Almaty to resolve
their own issues but never attended the meeting of the country's democratic forces held in
Almaty on 19 January, when an initiative to hold a referendum was backed. Meanwhile, some
of the participants of the meeting devoted to the 10th anniversary of democracy in the
country said that they had had nothing to do with the initiative group on holding the
referendum.
Baliyeva said that the CEC had had relevant letters from those citizens. Thus, Baliyeva
said that standards of the law on a nationwide referendum had been violated.
[Passage to end omitted: the initiative group can appeal against the CEC's decision to the
Supreme Court]
BBC Monitoring
14 Feb 2002
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