The International Herald Tribune reports that:

The United States said Monday that an election in Kazakhstan which was swept by the ruling party was flawed. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department said that while Kazakhstan had made progress toward democratic reform, Sunday’s election fell short of international standards.

The spokesman, Gonzalo Gallegos, pointed to provisions in Kazakh law that seem to have prevented opposition parties from gaining a single seat. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan party received 88 percent of Saturday’s vote, according to preliminary results released by the government.