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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle of reforms intended 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 known as protesters terrorists and requested assist from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, citizens will participate in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will take place on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms have been released. The reform package deal 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 mentioned to rework Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union tackle on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are only nominally independent, 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 new structure 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 started to loosen the president’s control with constitutional amendments in 2017 that slightly redistributed presidential powers to other branches of government and opened the trail for the election of native representatives, not less than on the village degree. 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 structure 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, several proposed provisions would slightly prohibit the power of the president. The president should not be a member of a political occasion, 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 occasion – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party – on April 26. Additionally, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut relations of the president can't maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain 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 laws, and as a substitute will simply approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for selecting deputies to each houses will change. 

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

Second, Mazhilis deputies will be elected in keeping with a mixed system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies can be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % will be straight 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 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Courtroom’s make-up, nevertheless, with the power to select the court docket’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 characterize. Maybe essentially the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the dearth of significant movement on local 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 – nonetheless, the candidates can have been chosen by the president. The best to elect local management has been one of the crucial consistent calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create selection is ultimately cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps toward actual consultant government in Kazakhstan; however, they don't necessarily represent ahead motion. Lots of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, reasonably than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.