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

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

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

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

An excellent-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are solely nominally independent, 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 new constitution 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 started to loosen the president’s control with constitutional amendments in 2017 that slightly redistributed presidential powers to other branches of government and opened the path for the election of native representatives, a minimum of on the village degree. Nonetheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal control over Kazakhstan’s politics by together with provisions that protected him as “elbasy,” or leader 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 sign of the Nazarbayev family’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would slightly restrict the facility of the president. The president should not be a member of a political get together, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva called “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat get together – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Additionally, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and close relations of the president can't hold political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, however the distribution of power between the higher and decrease houses will shift considerably. The Senate will not have the facility to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will just approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for selecting deputies to both houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will be lowered to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats will probably be transferred to the Senate, and the Meeting of the Peoples will now solely get to appoint five deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will be reduced from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies can be elected in line with a blended system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies will likely be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 percent will likely be instantly elected.

The one proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court docket. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court 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 makeup, nevertheless, with the flexibility to select the courtroom’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasized the significance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that will bring government bodies closer to the populations they characterize. Maybe the most disappointing facet of proposed reforms is the dearth 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 could have been selected by the president. The precise to elect native management has been one of the most constant demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create alternative is ultimately cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are important steps towards real consultant government in Kazakhstan; however, they do not essentially constitute ahead movement. Lots of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, fairly than materially altering the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.