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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle of reforms supposed 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 Safety Treaty Organization to quell mass unrest, citizens will take part in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will happen on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms have been released. The reform package 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 remodel 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 brilliant-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are only nominally impartial, and the president and their administration have practically unlimited control over political decision-making. Kazakhstan’s first step to a super-presidential system was the adoption of a brand 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 different branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of native representatives, at least at the village level. Nonetheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal 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 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, several proposed provisions would barely prohibit the facility 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 occasion – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Additionally, the president can not override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut members of the family of the president can't hold political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament extra energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the higher and decrease homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will no longer have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and as an alternative will simply approve or reject legal guidelines passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the process for choosing deputies to both homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will be diminished to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. These seats can be transferred to the Senate, and the Meeting of the Peoples will now only get to appoint 5 deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president will probably be decreased from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies might be elected based on a blended system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies will probably be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % will probably be instantly elected.

The only proposed changes to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Courtroom. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court till the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Court’s make-up, nevertheless, with the ability to select the court’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasized the significance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may carry government our bodies nearer to the populations they signify. Perhaps probably the most disappointing aspect 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 – however, the candidates could have been chosen by the president. The suitable to elect local management has been one of the vital consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create alternative is ultimately cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are vital steps towards real representative government in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they don't necessarily constitute ahead movement. Many of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that beforehand existed, rather than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.