79 candidates nominated for Kazakhstan's Senate elections
By Aynur Jafarova
Some 79 candidates have been nominated for elections to
Kazakhstan's Senate (Upper House of Parliament), Trend Agency reported quoting the
Central Election Commission (CEC).
"Some 14 persons have been nominated by Maslikhats (local
representative body) and 65 are self-nominated," the CEC said.
Kazakhstan's Senate elections will be held on October 1. Kazakh
President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed a relevant decree on July
31.
There are 4 women among the nominated candidates. The average age
of the candidates is 53 years. The youngest candidate is 37 and the
oldest one is 66 years old.
There are 29 engineers among the candidates, 12 economists, 11
teachers, 11 agricultural workers (agronomists, livestock
specialists, veterinarians and others), 10 doctors, 4 lawyers, and
2 are representatives of other specialties.
Some 4 of the candidates are acting as Senate deputies, 33 are
officials of the state bodies, organizations, enterprises and
institutions, 28 of them work in commercial structures and 13 in
the fields of science, culture, education and healthcare.
All nominated candidates meet the requirements of Kazakh
Constitution and relevant legislation.
Every candidate is required to be supported by at least 10 percent
of votes of all Maslikhat deputies for registration. The support
should be verified by a collection of corresponding number of
signatures of Maslikhat deputies. Each elector can put his/her
signature in support of only one candidate.
The signature sheets for collection of the Maslikhat deputies'
signatures will be issued for all candidates who have been checked
for the compliance with requirements of Kazakh Constitution and
legislation. The collection should be organized by the proxies of
the candidates.
Each nominee should contribute an election fee worth 300,000 tenge
(182 tenge=$1) to the special account of the CEC as a deposit.
A candidate and his/her spouse are obliged to submit declarations
on income and property to the tax bodies at the place of his/her
residence before registration.
August 31 is the deadline for the nomination.
Registration of candidates will be carried out by regional election
commissions and the election commissions of cities of Astana and
Almaty until September 11.
There are 47 deputies in Kazakh Senate, 15 of them are appointed directly by the president, and the rest 32 (local representatives) are elected by people through elections. Senators are elected for a six-year term. Every three years, some 16 senators are re-elected. The last election of Kazakh Senate was held in 2011.