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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle of reforms intended to remodel the nation 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 Security Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, citizens will participate in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will take place on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms were released. The reform package deal addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the whole constitutional articles – and was developed by a working group that Tokayev established in March. The reforms are mentioned to transform Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a powerful parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union address on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are solely nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have almost unlimited control over political decision-making. Kazakhstan’s first step to a super-presidential system was the adoption of a new constitution in 1995 that was pushed by Nursultan Nazarbayev after dissolving an uncooperative parliament. Nazarbayev additional 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 different branches of presidency and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, at the very least at the village level. However, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private control over Kazakhstan’s politics by together with provisions that protected him as “elbasy,” or chief of the nation.

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The proposed constitutional reforms strip the constitution 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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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would barely limit the power of the president. The president shouldn't be a member of a political party, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva referred to as “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat get together – a rebranded model 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 close members of the family of the president can not hold political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, however the distribution of power between the higher and decrease homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will now not have the facility to make new laws, and as a substitute will just approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for selecting deputies to both houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis might be decreased to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. These seats will likely be transferred to the Senate, and the Meeting of the Peoples will now solely get to appoint 5 deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president will be diminished from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies might be elected in line with a blended system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies will probably be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 p.c can be straight elected.

The one proposed modifications to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Courtroom. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court docket till the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Court’s make-up, nevertheless, with the flexibility to pick the court’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasized the significance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may deliver government our bodies closer to the populations they signify. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the shortage of serious movement on native illustration for residents of Kazakhstan’s largest cities. If the referendum passes, Kazakhstanis will get to vote for akims of oblasts, main cities, and the capital – nonetheless, the candidates may have been selected by the president. The correct to elect native leadership has been probably the most constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this try to create choice is in the end cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps toward real representative authorities in Kazakhstan; however, they do not necessarily represent forward movement. Many of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, rather than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.