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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle of reforms meant to transform the country from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust 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, just one month after the proposed reforms were 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 mentioned to remodel Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union deal with on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are only nominally impartial, and the president and their administration have practically 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 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 different branches of government and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, at the very 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 leader 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 sign of the Nazarbayev family’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would barely prohibit the power of the president. The president should not be a member of a political occasion, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva known as “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this modification, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat celebration – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan occasion – on April 26. Additionally, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut relations of the president cannot maintain political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament extra power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the higher and lower homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will now not have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and instead will simply approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the process for selecting deputies to both houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will likely 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 Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to nominate five deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will likely be diminished from 15 to 10.

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

The one proposed modifications to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court docket until the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a robust affect over the Constitutional Court docket’s make-up, nevertheless, with the power to pick out the courtroom’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other 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 convey government our bodies closer to the populations they characterize. Maybe probably the most disappointing facet 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 will have been selected by the president. The precise to elect local leadership has been probably the most constant demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create choice is ultimately cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps towards actual consultant government in Kazakhstan; however, they don't necessarily constitute forward movement. Most of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, slightly than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.