MEET THE PANEL Name: Aldiyar Autalipov Age: 22 Lives: Almaty Works: Student Votes: Zharmakhan Tuyakbai Click here to meet the other panellists

I believe there is a great deal of corruption in our government and many say that our current president could even be implicated in this.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. Corruption was an integral of the Soviet political culture that we have inherited.

Yet people are afraid of change. Many are simply satisfied with their lives and do not want the country to move in a new direction because they fear chaos.

The current president is very authoritarian. A constitution passed in 1995 subjected all branches of power to the president. He controls and manipulates the courts so they are not objective when it comes to political decisions.

The parliament is subject to the president. It is not an independent branch of government.

The opposition candidate Tuyakbai has a proposal for a new constitution, which would mean a much more democratic regime with regional governments.

I used to be a supporter of the current president. I used to be a victim of the total control of the government. After all, it has a monopoly on the mass media.

But I changed when I started to read the opposition newspapers and talked to people who had alternative views.

Yet I still feel the current president will win because of this monopoly over the mass media and the simple ignorance of people.

They are ready to vote for a president who has served a 14-year term and who is now running for another seven years.