ASTANA: Resource rich Kazakhstan is set Sunday to elect its long-serving leader to a third decade in power, even as officials eye the revolts that have swept leaders from office in other Muslim states.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev's victory against three minor candidates in the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation is so certain that he has decided against campaigning and is already talking of running again in 2016.
"It is hard and practically impossible to compete against the favourite," the president's political adviser Yermukhamet Yertysbayev told Kazakh media.
"The (opposition) parties are getting valuable campaigning experience that will come in useful at next year's parliamentary elections," he added.
Commentators predict Nazarbayev should improve on his 91-percent performance in 2005 elections, now that he has also been officially proclaimed "leader of the nation" (Elbasy in Kazakh).
A former engineer, Nazarbayev has ruled the republic since the Soviet era, first as the Communist Party's First Secretary from 1989 and then extending his rule through various disputed referendums and polls.
But officials are showing signs of nerves as they watch social revolutions sweep other veteran leaders from power not in only in Middle East and North Africa but even the neighbouring republic of Kyrgyzstan.
"The events leading to regime changes in some Middle Eastern countries could be repeated in Central Asia," conceded ruling Nur-Otan party secretary Yerlan Karin.
"But if this does happen, it would not be a part of some chain reaction but caused by internal reasons," the Nur-Otan party member said.
Nazarbayev had been on course to hold yet another national referendum, this one prolonging his term until 2020, when he suddenly changed course under insistent pressure from the United States.
He decided to hold a snap poll instead that would theoretically confirm his democratic credentials while giving opponents no time to mount a meaningful campaign.
Yet few truly expect violence to follow Sunday's elections: Kazakhstan is by far the richest republic in Central Asia and has not been wracked by the kind of clan warfare evident among its neighbours.
Nazarbayev has already received the best wishes of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and only come under mild criticism from the US State Department for organising yet another snap poll that caught his opponents off guard.
"The state bodies should take up the responsibility for ensuring the election to be fair and honest," the State Department's Central Asia pointman Robert Blake said on a recent visit.
The country's economy is on the upswing as commodity prices rebound and the government enlists Western advisers to guide it between the pitfalls of inflation and a potential bank crisis resulting from non-performing loans.
The economy is expected to grow about seven percent this year while state coffers fill with reserves.
The government, still bristling at Borat the comedy hit that made Kazakhstan the butt of global jokes this week ran a five page advertisement in the International Herald Tribune portraying the country's glories.
But the economic lustre is muted by a political system that differs little from the Soviet era and relies exclusively on the survival of one man.
The ruling party controls every seat in parliament and insists on holding early elections that rarely give opponents more than a couple of months to prepare.
Nazarbayev has refused to either appoint or suggest a successor amid speculation of nervous jockeying for position between the various business and political camps.
The country's main opposition group has decided to simply boycott the polls.
It even dared stage a rally in the financial capital Almaty during which protesters launched paper airplanes with a message for people to stay home.
"In the last elections, we were allowed to visit universities were we could give students lessons about election rules," said opposition Respublika newspaper journalist Irina Mednikov.
"But this time, out of 20 universities, we were only allowed to visit three," she said.
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