What’s in Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Referendum? – The Diplomat

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package of reforms meant to remodel the country from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong parliament.”

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called protesters terrorists and requested assist from the Russian-backed Collective Safety Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, citizens will participate in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will happen on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms were launched. The reform bundle addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the full constitutional articles – and was developed by a working group that Tokayev established in March. The reforms are said to remodel Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union address on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are solely nominally impartial, and the president and their administration have almost limitless management over political decision-making. Kazakhstan’s first step to a super-presidential system was the adoption of a brand new structure in 1995 that was pushed by Nursultan Nazarbayev after dissolving an uncooperative parliament. Nazarbayev further consolidated his private powers with constitutional amendments in 1998, 2007, and 2011.

Nazarbayev started to loosen the president’s control with constitutional amendments in 2017 that barely redistributed presidential powers to other branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of local representatives, at the least at the village level. Nonetheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private control over Kazakhstan’s politics by including provisions that protected him as “elbasy,” or chief of the nation.

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The proposed constitutional reforms strip the structure of mentions of elbasy and the First President of the Republic, which some see as a continued signal of the Nazarbayev family’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would slightly restrict the facility of the president. The president shouldn't be a member of a political celebration, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva called “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this modification, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat social gathering – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan celebration – on April 26. Moreover, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and shut members of the family of the president can't maintain political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament more power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of power between the upper and lower homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will no longer have the ability to make new laws, and instead will simply approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for selecting deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis shall be decreased to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats shall be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now only get to nominate five deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will probably be reduced from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies shall be elected in response to a blended system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies can be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 p.c will likely be straight elected.

The only proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court till the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a strong influence over the Constitutional Courtroom’s make-up, nevertheless, with the ability to select the court’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasised the importance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that can bring government our bodies closer to the populations they represent. Perhaps essentially the most disappointing facet of proposed reforms is the dearth of great movement on local illustration for residents of Kazakhstan’s largest cities. If the referendum passes, Kazakhstanis will get to vote for akims of oblasts, major cities, and the capital – nevertheless, the candidates can have been chosen by the president. The precise to elect native management has been one of the crucial consistent calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create alternative is ultimately beauty.

The proposed reforms are important steps toward real consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; however, they don't essentially represent forward movement. Most of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, reasonably than materially altering the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.