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 known as protesters terrorists and requested support from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Organization 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 had been released. The reform bundle 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 rework 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.

An excellent-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are solely nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have almost unlimited management over political decision-making. Kazakhstan’s first step to a super-presidential system was the adoption of a 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 began to loosen the president’s management with constitutional amendments in 2017 that barely redistributed presidential powers to other branches of presidency and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, at least at the village degree. However, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private management over Kazakhstan’s politics by including provisions that protected him as “elbasy,” or chief of the nation.

Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing tales to look at throughout the Asia-Pacific.

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. 

Enjoying this article? Click here to subscribe for full entry. Just $5 a month.

Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would slightly prohibit the facility of the president. The president should not be a member of a political party, 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 occasion – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party – on April 26. Additionally, the president can not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and shut relations of the president cannot maintain political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament more energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, however the distribution of power between the upper and decrease homes will shift considerably. The Senate will now not have the power to make new legal guidelines, and as an alternative will just approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the method for selecting deputies to both houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will be decreased to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. These seats will 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 likely be reduced from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will likely be elected in keeping with a mixed system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies will likely be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 percent might be immediately elected.

The one proposed changes 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 robust affect over the Constitutional Courtroom’s makeup, nevertheless, with the flexibility to select the court’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasised the importance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may deliver authorities bodies nearer to the populations they represent. Maybe essentially the most disappointing facet of proposed reforms is the dearth of serious movement on local 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 – nevertheless, the candidates can have been chosen by the president. The fitting to elect local management has been one of the crucial constant demands from Almaty residents, and this try to create selection is finally cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps toward actual representative government in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they do not necessarily constitute forward motion. Lots of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, quite than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.