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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle of reforms intended to remodel the nation from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust parliament.”

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev referred to as protesters terrorists and requested help from the Russian-backed Collective Safety Treaty Group 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 were launched. The reform package deal addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the full 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 only nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have almost limitless control 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 presidency and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, no less than on the village stage. However, 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 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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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would barely restrict the power of the president. The president should not be a member of a political party, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva known 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. Moreover, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and close family members of the president can not maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more power 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 no longer have the facility to make new legal guidelines, and as an alternative will simply approve or reject legal guidelines passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the process for selecting deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis can be decreased to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats will likely be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to nominate 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 % of Mazhilis deputies might be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % shall be instantly elected.

The only proposed modifications to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court docket. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court until the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a powerful influence over the Constitutional Court docket’s makeup, however, with the flexibility to pick out the courtroom’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasized the importance 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 symbolize. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the lack 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 could have been selected by the president. The suitable to elect local management has been one of the most consistent calls for from Almaty residents, and this try and create alternative is ultimately beauty.

The proposed reforms are vital steps toward actual consultant government in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they do not essentially represent forward motion. Many of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, quite than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.