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Kazakhstan’s lower house urges leader to set early presidential election

Nursultan Nazarbayev has been Kazakhstan’s leader since 1989

Kazakhstan’s leader Nursultan Nazarbayev Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Kazakhstan’s leader Nursultan Nazarbayev

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

ASTANA, February 18. /TASS/. Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament, Majilis, on Wednesday unanimously adopted an appeal to the country’s leader to set an early presidential election.

"We ask to support the initiative of the Council of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan and in line with the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan to consider the issue of calling an early presidential election," says the document read out loud by Majilis speaker Kabybulla Jakupov.

The lawmakers back the proposal for holding snap presidential polls as "in the near future the efforts of the whole society should be aimed at turning the risks and threats of the world crisis into new possibilities and prospects for our motherland."

The Council of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan (AKP), a national political body tasked with representing different ethnic groups, on February 14 announced the initiative to hold an early presidential election.

Under the law, a snap presidential election is set by the head of state and held within two months after being called.

Nursultan Nazarbayev has been Kazakhstan’s leader since 1989, when he was named First Secretary of the country’s Communist Party. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Nazarbayev was elected Kazakhstan's president. In 2007, Kazakhstan’s parliament granted Nazarbayev the right to run for an unlimited number of presidential terms.

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