Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev won re-election by a landslide on Monday, but international observers branded the vote flawed, citing ballot box stuffing and the intimidation of opposition campaigners.
In a strongly-worded statement, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said its 460 monitors had noted some improvements but the many flaws "limited the possibility for a meaningful competition".
"There was harassment, intimidation and detentions of campaign staff and supporters of opposition candidates, including cases of beatings of campaign staff," the OSCE said.
Nazarbayev, in power in the Central Asian state since 1989, looked set to shrug off the criticism. The opposition stopped short of calling for protests due to laws - criticised by the OSCE - banning them.
Opposition challenger Zharmarkhan Tuyakbai told reporters in Almaty the result "is an obvious sign that our country is turning from an authoritarian regime into a totalitarian one."
The vote means Nazarbayev will rule for another seven years, a reassuring signal to big oil investors in the United States, China and Russia who have negotiated billions of dollars of contracts with him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close ally, was the first foreign leader to phone to congratulate him. Russian observers gave the vote a clean bill of health.
"The (Russian observers') methodology appears to be: be nice to your friends," Bruce George, head of the OSCE mission, told reporters. He said he was expressing a personal view.
In Astana, the capital that he built, Nazarbayev said the vote was clean and made clear he believed he had put a stop to the "people's revolutions" that have deposed veteran leaders in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.
"We're talking not about revolutions but evolutions," he told reporters. "Kazakhstan voted for calmness and stability."
Nazarbayev dismissed any suggestion that the Soviet-style margin of victory - 91 percent against less than 7 percent for the main opposition challenger - was in any way suspect in a country that has never held a vote judged free and fair.
The OSCE report noted many flaws including restrictions on campaigning, people interfering in polling stations, multiple voting, pressure on students to vote, media bias in favour of Nazarbayev and legal restrictions on freedom of expression.
"The voting was generally calm and peaceful, but the process deteriorated during the count, which was viewed as bad or very bad in one out of four counts observed," it said.
Nazarbayev came to power as the Communist Party chief in Kazakhstan. Then he won presidential elections in 1991 with 98.8 percent of the vote, and in 1999 with 79.8 percent.
Despite his patchy democratic record and an authoritarian streak, he has maintained warm relations with the West, former imperial master Russia and China, a rising power in the region.
The country is forecast to become one of the world's top 10 oil producers in the next decade as it develops new offshore oil fields in the Caspian Sea.
The opposition has accused the West of putting Kazakhstan's oil before democracy. Visiting Western leaders usually come to praise Nazarbayev for economic reforms and political stability - his own favourite themes - rather than criticise his record. Under Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan has reversed economic decline after the collapse of the Soviet Union and reformed its economy.
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