Nursultan Nazarbayev, the re-elected president of Kazakhstan.

The election in Kazakhstan held this Sunday gave five more years of service to its long serving president Nursultan Nayarbayev who won 97.7 percent of votes. The 74 year old president has been in charge of Kazakhstan with his Communist Party since 1989, right after leaving the USSR.

Nayarbayev celebrated his victory at a stadium in the Kazakh capital Astana. He walked down the red carpet waving and shaking hands with his supporters.

“I apologize that for super-democratic states such figures are unacceptable. But I could do nothing. If I had interfered, I would have looked undemocratic, right?”Nursultan said at a press conference held after his celebration.

The image of president Nayarbayev is mythicized in Kazakhstan while most of his opponents that had the courage to speak against him ended up in prison or sent abroad. He is called the “Leader of the Nation” and the law lets him do whatever he wants. One of the privileges he gave himself is to run for president as many times as he wants.

Besides him two more candidates ran for presidency in this election. One of them is a low profile member of a Communist party and the other is an ex-regional governor loyal to Nayarbayev. “Voters were not offered a genuine choice between political alternatives,” said the report of The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe.

On the other hand the dictatorship hasn’t had a bad effect on the country; Kazakhstan is currently the second ex-USSR country in terms of oil export and annual revenue. Also, Kazakhstan is a mostly Muslim country and has no trouble with ethnical violence. In addition they have great relations both with their neighbors (Russia and China) and USA and Europe as well.

Like every oil export based economy Kazakhstan has also suffered some loss since the price of oil dropped, but their economy is still quite strong and out of recession.

The first officials that have congratulated Nayarbayev on his victory were Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping. However Europe is criticizing referring to the decision as a bad level of human rights and have raised the fact that not even one election held there so far has been monitored by any impartial international organization.

Nayarbayev promised to return the economy of his country to its previous state and he hopes that wars affecting their business will soon be over in peace.