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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package deal of reforms supposed to transform the country from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a powerful parliament.”

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

The vote will happen on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms had been released. The reform bundle addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the entire constitutional articles – and was developed by a working group that Tokayev established in March. The reforms are stated to rework Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union tackle on March 16.

An excellent-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are solely nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have nearly limitless control 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 personal powers with constitutional amendments in 1998, 2007, and 2011.

Nazarbayev began to loosen the president’s control with constitutional amendments in 2017 that barely redistributed presidential powers to different branches of government and opened the trail for the election of native representatives, a minimum of at the village degree. Nevertheless, 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 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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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would slightly restrict the ability of the president. The president should not be a member of a political party, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva known as “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat party – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party – on April 26. Moreover, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and shut family members of the president can not maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the higher and lower houses will shift considerably. The Senate will now not have the facility to make new laws, and instead will just approve or reject laws handed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for choosing deputies to both homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis might be reduced to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats will likely be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now only get to nominate 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will probably be reduced from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies might be elected in response to a combined system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies will probably be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % can be straight elected.

The only proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court docket. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court docket till the adoption of the 1995 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Court docket’s make-up, however, with the power to pick out the court’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasized the importance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that can carry authorities bodies closer to the populations they characterize. Perhaps essentially the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the shortage of serious motion on native representation 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 – however, the candidates could have been chosen by the president. The best to elect local management has been some of the consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create selection is finally cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps toward actual representative authorities in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they don't essentially constitute forward motion. Many of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, moderately than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.