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

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

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

The vote will happen on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms were launched. 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 said to transform 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 where parliaments and courts are solely nominally independent, and the president and their administration have nearly unlimited 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 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 presidency and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, at least at the village degree. Nonetheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal management 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 sign of the Nazarbayev family’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would barely limit the facility of the president. The president shouldn't be a member of a political celebration, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva referred to as “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat celebration – a rebranded model 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 hold political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament more energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, however the distribution of energy between the higher and lower homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will not have the facility to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will just approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the process for selecting 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 might be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now only get to appoint 5 deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president will likely be diminished from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies can be elected in response to a combined system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies will likely be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 p.c might be immediately elected.

The one proposed changes to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court until 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, however, with the power to select the court’s chairman and four 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 may carry authorities our bodies nearer to the populations they characterize. Maybe probably the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the dearth of serious movement 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 – nevertheless, the candidates can have been selected by the president. The right to elect native management has been one of the most constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create selection is finally cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps towards real representative government in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they do not essentially represent ahead motion. Most of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, moderately than materially altering the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.