In the run-up to the presidential election expected in December, a group of local human rights defenders, journalists and sociologists have banded together to form what could be the first genuinely independent election monitoring group in Kazakhstan.

"We belong to neither the opposition nor the government," Eugeniy Zhovtis, director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law and member of the newly founded Initiative for Fair Election, said from the commercial Kazakh capital of Almaty.

Once their findings are published, they would leave it to the Kazakh public to judge the final results, Zhovtis explained, adding: "We don't want to give anyone the possibility to manipulate the results."

These elections were crucial for the next seven years of Central Asia's largest state, he said, asserting: "We should be sure and confident of the results and that the elected president is legitimate."

Launched on Tuesday, the Initiative for Fair Election could be a step in the right direction in the vast steppe nation of 15 million. The polls will be the first time that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev will face real competition since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.