Nursultan Nazarbayev has led Kazakhstan as president, since independence in 1991, extending his tenure through a series of constitutional revisions and elections in which he has faced only token opposition.
Related: Kazakhstan election avoids question of Nazarbayev successor In the blue corner is Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan for ever (literally: the country has never had another elected leader since it was formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union).
A summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, scheduled to start this Thursday, with the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, and the Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, was cancelled at the last minute.
But that sounds doubtful in a country that also cracks down on its opposition press and where the president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, regularly claims more than 90% of the vote in elections.A growing number of such countries have an internet that each of them can call their own, walled off as much or as little as suits them.
Yet its Persian derivation has connotations of a "royal porte", and the widespread belief among Kazakhstanis is that the city will one day be renamed Nursultan, after the man who had it built.
RELATIONS between Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan, and his counterpart in Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, have long been soured by their tussle for regional primacy in Central Asia.
Nursultan Nazarbaev, the president of Kazakhstan, still insists his country will churn out 8m barrels of oil a day by 2015 as much as Saudi Arabia.
This week Mr Putin rattled his sabre at Kazakhstan, still ruled by the elderly Nursultan Nazarbayev: any succession squabble would be an opportunity.
WHEN President Nursultan Nazarbaev selected the city of Akmola in northern Kazakhstan as his country's new capital two years ago, his decision evoked little enthusiasm.
But this is a sign of its decline, rather than its strength, plus an indirect victory for Nursultan Nazarbaev, the country's authoritarian president.Democratic Choice was created in November 2001 by senior government officials and leading bankers disgruntled over the increasing power of the president's son-in-law, Rakhat Aliev.
Under its strongman, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan clung to the Soviet Union till the bitter end and was the last of all the Soviet republics to declare independence.In this section Not-quite-eternal Nursultan Dead wood Prudent and proactive Gasping for breath More than pomp and frolics ReprintsYet Mr Nazarbayev stayed on and oversaw the country's transformation.
