DUSHANBE, July 4, Asia-Plus — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Wednesday he guarantees free and fair parliamentary election due in the republic in August.

“I as the head of state and guarantor of the Constitution will do my utmost for the elections to be free and fair and those parties that really enjoy popular support to take parliamentary seats,” he told a session of the Nur Otan Party (Light Fatherland).

Nazarbayev expressed confidence that Nur Otan will gain majority of votes in the upcoming polls in the lower house of parliament.

Earlier in the day, he announced that he would chair the party.

“I am confident that in an open and fair struggle our party will second support of the population’s majority and we will show that we are a leading force that will bring our country to prosperity and that our words coincide with our deeds,” he said.

Nazarbayev believes that Nur Otan should come to the polls “with a convincing program for education, affordable housing, healthcare and gas distribution.”

He pointed out that Kazakhstan’s gold and foreign exchange reserves will exceed 40 billion US dollars in the end of this year and the GDP will make up 7,000 US dollars per capita, a two-fold increase as against 2004 and ten-fold - as against mid-1990s.

In early summer Kazakhstan introduced amendments to the country’s Constitution. They envision no suspension of activities in a political party for the president serving his/her term of office.

In 1998, Nazarbayev initiated the creation of the Otan Party (Fatherland) to be chaired by the party’s first deputy. In July 2006, the Asar Party (With the whole world) created by Dariga Nazarbayeva, a daughter of the president, before the 2004 parliamentary polls joined Otan.

In November 2006, the Civil Party of Kazakhstan joined Otan.

“We had never had such a party in Kazakhstan’s historic development,” Nazarbayev said.

Late last year Otan was renamed into Nur Otan and numbers 700,000 members.