President of Kazakhstan over 16 years who bent the Central Asian nation. Nursultan who, in 2005, won a crushing re-election as president of Kazakhstan, for another seven-year term, is a man with ambitions as big as his sprawling country and who has bent his country of 15 million people to his will. He has overseen the foundation of a booming oil industry, created a new capital city, Astana, in the steppes, filled parliament with supporters, and changed the constitution to concentrate much of the nation's power in his hands. Nursultan though has delivered stability and, in recent years, robust economic growth that has resulted into higher living standards and made his country the most advanced central Asian state. Thus Kazakhstan is emerging as a significant central Asian power thanks to its vast Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves, ranking the country among the world's top 10 producers. Nursultan, once a steel worker, who earned the reputation of a reformer in Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union, became President when his country was declared independent, in December 1991, has always been a determined and ruthless person.