All 7 parties admitted to the race sent representatives to one studio at the state channel 24KZ, which billed the evening as the campaign's main political discussion and aired it live from 20:00: Aibek Dadebay for Adilet, Daniya Yespayeva for Ak Zhol, Nursultan Shokanov for the People's Party, Kairat Aituganov for Auyl, Askhat Rakhimzhanov for the OSDP, Aidarbek Khodzhanazarov for Respublica and Azamatkhan Amirtayev for Baytaq.
One name a viewer of past cycles would miss is Amanat. The former ruling party wrote to the election commission declining to run and folded into Adilet, whose congress approved the merger on 14 June.
“About 59,000 submissions from citizens came in through QR codes and a contact centre.”
The format ran 4 rounds, with parties questioning each other directly before closing statements. The arguments stayed on household ground: incomes, wages, jobs, social protection and the village economy.
The campaign's scale shows in the mailbag. About 59,000 submissions from citizens came in through QR codes and a contact centre, including from voters abroad in Belgium, the United States, China and the UAE.
Campaign silence falls on Saturday. Polling opens Sunday 23 August, and the vote abroad will run on a thinner map: 3 stations came off the foreign list earlier this week.