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

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

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called 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 had been 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 mentioned to rework Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a powerful 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 unlimited 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 other branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of native representatives, no less than on the village level. However, 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, several proposed provisions would slightly restrict the facility of the president. The president shouldn't be a member of a political party, 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 get together – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan celebration – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and close family members of the president can't maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of power between the upper and decrease houses will shift considerably. The Senate will no longer have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and instead will just approve or reject legal guidelines passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the process for selecting deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will be lowered to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats can be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to nominate five deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president will be diminished from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies shall be elected in accordance with a blended system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies might be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 percent might be immediately elected.

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

Tokayev has emphasised the significance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that will deliver government bodies closer to the populations they symbolize. Maybe probably the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the lack of serious motion on native 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 – nonetheless, the candidates could have been selected by the president. The fitting to elect native leadership has been probably the most consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create choice is ultimately cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are vital steps towards 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 power that beforehand existed, slightly than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.