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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle 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 known as protesters terrorists and requested assist from the Russian-backed Collective Safety 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 were released. The reform package 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 stated to transform 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.

A super-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 new structure in 1995 that was pushed by Nursultan Nazarbayev after dissolving an uncooperative parliament. Nazarbayev additional consolidated his personal 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 government and opened the path for the election of local representatives, a minimum of on the village stage. However, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private control over Kazakhstan’s politics by including 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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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would slightly 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 called “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this modification, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat social gathering – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party – on April 26. Additionally, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut members of the family of the president cannot maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament extra power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of power between the higher and lower houses will shift considerably. The Senate will now not have the power to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will just approve or reject legal guidelines passed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for selecting deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will probably be lowered to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats might be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to appoint 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president shall be lowered from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will be elected in accordance with a combined system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies will probably be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % will be directly elected.

The only 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 Court docket’s make-up, however, with the ability to select the court’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite 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 will bring authorities our bodies nearer to the populations they signify. Perhaps probably the most disappointing facet of proposed reforms is the dearth of great movement on local 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 – nevertheless, the candidates can have been chosen by the president. The precise to elect native management has been probably the most constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create selection is in the end beauty.

The proposed reforms are essential steps toward real consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they don't essentially represent forward motion. Lots of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that previously existed, fairly than materially altering the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.