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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package 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 referred to as protesters terrorists and requested help from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, residents will participate in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will happen on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms have been launched. 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 said to remodel Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union address on March 16.

A brilliant-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are only nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have practically unlimited 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 additional consolidated his private powers with constitutional amendments in 1998, 2007, and 2011.

Nazarbayev began to loosen the president’s management 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, a minimum of at the village level. Nevertheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private control over Kazakhstan’s politics by together with 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 household’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would barely limit the facility of the president. The president should not be a member of a political social gathering, 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 party – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan occasion – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and close relations of the president can not maintain political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament more power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, but the distribution of power between the upper and lower homes will shift considerably. The Senate will not have the facility to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will simply approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for selecting deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis can be decreased 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 Meeting of the Peoples will now solely get to appoint five deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president shall be decreased from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will probably be elected according to a combined system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies shall be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % will probably be immediately elected.

The only 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 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Court docket’s make-up, nonetheless, with the power to pick the court’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite 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 will convey government bodies nearer to the populations they symbolize. Perhaps essentially the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the dearth of serious motion 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 will have been selected by the president. The suitable to elect local management has been one of the crucial consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create choice is in the end beauty.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps toward actual representative government in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they don't essentially represent ahead movement. Lots of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that beforehand existed, somewhat than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.