Astana, 10 November. Registration of 13 candidates for the Astana maslikhat has been cancelled over unreliable information in their declarations of assets and liabilities, the city’s territorial election commission said, BES.media writes.
Initially, the commission said, 83 candidates were registered in the capital. Later registration was cancelled for 15: two withdrew themselves, and another 13 lost registration on the basis of replies from the Astana state revenue department about unreliable information in declarations. Fourteen of the fifteen ran by self-nomination. Some are contesting the district commissions’ decisions with complaints to the court and the territorial commission. Who exactly lost registration and what discrepancies were found, the report does not say.
The reasons are visible in the law. Under the Constitutional Law “On Elections”, Inbusiness.kz recalled, a candidate and spouse submit declarations of assets and liabilities to the state revenue bodies before registration, and the commission instructs them to verify the information. In 2024 a candidate for the Astana maslikhat had registration cancelled under this scheme: the spouse had not listed securities in the declaration, and the court found the commission’s decision lawful even though the candidate withdrew the declaration and submitted a new one. This year’s maslikhat elections will be held on 29 November.
What it means: Declarations were the ground for cancelling registration of 13 candidates, and of the 15 cancellations in the capital 14 affected self-nominated candidates. What counts as unreliability the report does not disclose; in a similar 2024 case the court backed the commission.
Who benefits: The report names no beneficiary. Every candidate bears the risk: by law the spouse’s declaration is checked too, and an error in it, as the 2024 case showed, leads to cancellation of registration. The reasons for the discrepancies in the cancelled cases are unknown.
Background: Self-nomination means taking part in an election not from a party but on one’s own initiative. A maslikhat is the representative body of a region, city or district. A declaration of assets and liabilities is a document in which a candidate and spouse show property, money and debts.
