The story with the idea of a referendum to extend the power of the Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev had a quite unexpected ending. On January 31, the head of the state spoke against such a referendum and proposed to hold early elections. Now when there are two years before the new elections and nothing seems to threaten Nazarbayev’s status his decision has puzzled most of the analysts.

In late December, the Kazakh parliament proposed to hold a referendum to extend Nazarbayev’s power and to make relevant amendments to the Constitution. The president did not agree. Nevertheless by mid January 5,012,000 people (55.2% of voters in the republic) had put their signatures for the referendum. That is why, on January 14, the parliament managed to override the president’s veto and unanimously adopted the amendments to the Constitution, concerning the referendum to extend Nazarbayev’s power till 2020. The President submitted those amendments to the Constitutional Council for consideration and the council declared them illegal on January 31 due to “obscure wording”.

On the same day the President made an address to the Kazakh nation in which he said that “the Constitutional Council did not rule out an option to hold the referendum” and proposed to hold early presidential elections. He stressed that in case of early elections his term of office will be reduced from seven to five years.

In terms of time in power Nazarbayev is the absolute leader among the heads of the states of the former USSR. His closest competitor is the Uzbek leader Islam Karimov became the president a little bit later. Since 1984, Nazarbayev was the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh Soviet Socialists Republic; in June 1989, he became the First Secretary of the Communist party of Kazakhstan and in March 1990, he was appointed the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet (head of the state). In April 1990, the deputies of the Supreme Soviet elected him as the President of Kazakhstan and on December 1 1991, he won the direct presidential elections in which no other candidate ran against him.

In April 1995, referendum extended his term till December 2000. In August 1995, the new Constitution was adopted, under which all previous terms were declared invalid. It gave Nazarbayev an opportunity to stay president for 15 years. In September 1998, Nazarbayev proposed to hold early presidential elections and to make a number of amendments to the Constitution. According to him, this would contribute to the democratization of the Kazakh society. In practice the changes in the Constitution led to further strengthening of the president's power. In particular, the term of office was extended to seven years and one of the amendments would allow Nazarbayev to seek re-election as many times as he wishes. This enabled Nazarbayev to be reflected in January 1999 and in December 2005.

The next presidential elections in Kazakhstan were to be held only in 2012 and there were no obvious reasons for Nazarbayev to force them. That is why the proposal to extend the president’s power by holding a referendum as well as the decision to hold early elections puzzled analysts. The assumptions that have emerged recently can be reduced to several versions. The first version is that after the end of Kazakhstan’s chairmanship in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the completion of the summit of this organization in Astana in December Nazarbayev’s rating was on top and he wanted like to use that moment to extend his power with minimum efforts. The optimal solution would be holding a referendum but Washington, Brussels and some international organizations oppose this idea.

OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rightsstated that the referendum limits citizens’ opportunities to use their voting rights and could not replace regular elections, because if Nazarbayev’s power is confirmed there won’t be new elections at least for 15 years.

US, Germany also voiced their warnings against the referendum, while the US embassy in Astana urged the Kazakh president “not to undermine his own historical heritage”. Probably, Nazarbayev decided that he should not ignore this statement.

According to the second version, the leadership of Kazakhstan fears the repetition of the events, which recently took place in Kyrgyzstan, Tunisia and Egypt. Kyrgyzstan, which still suffers from the consequences of the revolution of April 2010, is close to Kazakhstan geographically, ethnically, religiously, socially and historically. As for Tunisia and Egypt the mass protests there broke out right before the Kazakh president announced the plan to hold early elections. The repetition of the “Tunisian-Egyptian scenario” in Kazakhstan, which seems unbelievable to many people, has been regularly mentioned in the commentaries of the experts and statements of the officials in Astana. For example, in an interview with the Liter newspaper the President’s adviser Yermuchamet Yertysbayev was asked if the repetition of the Egyptian events in Kazakhstan was possible. He ruled out such a possibility saying that in Egypt half of the population was living on two dollars a day and in Kazakhstan this was the case in mid 1990-s but since then the standard of living had increased many times.

Meanwhile the low standard of living in Egypt and Tunisia was not the only reason that triggered the recent protests. In the last several decades, Tunisia was the leader among African countries in terms of living standards and economic growth. So a visibly quiet situation in Kazakhstan may turn to be deceptive as well as the support provided by the West to Nazarbayev. In the near future Kazakhstan will have to go through the change of the head of the state in any case. The forthcoming to this stage creates conditions for the interference from outside and tenses the fight between the groups of the Kazakh political elite.

Finally, the third version: by setting early elections Nazarbayev has made a well-thought multi-step combination. He managed to be reelected in the right time and hopes that in future he will be protected from waves of new colored” revolutions.