Kazakh leader says plans to call snap presidential vote this autumn

Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said Thursday he plans to call a snap presidential election this autumn and will reduce the presidency to one seven-year term.

In an address to the Central Asian country's parliament, Tokayev also proposed holding snap parliamentary elections in the first half of 2023, after his country underwent a political crisis earlier this year that left more than 200 people dead.

"I propose that we hold early presidential elections in the autumn of 2022," Tokayev said, saying measures were needed to "strengthen our statehood" and "maintain the momentum of reforms".

A presidential vote had been due in Kazakhstan in 2024 and parliamentary elections in 2025.

Tokayev said he would move the parliamentary vote forward after constitutional changes earlier this year set "completely new standards for a political system with fair and open rules of the game".

The term of the presidency would meanwhile be limited to one term of seven years, he said, from the current two five-year terms.

January's unrest roiled energy-rich Kazakhstan, one of the most stable of the Central Asian countries that gained independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

It came after career diplomat Tokayev was hand-picked in 2019 by Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had ruled Kazakhstan for close to three decades, to replace him in the presidency.