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 called protesters terrorists and requested help from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, citizens will take part in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will take place 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 full constitutional articles – and was developed by a working group that Tokayev established in March. The reforms are stated to rework Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a powerful parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union tackle on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are solely nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have almost limitless management over political decision-making. Kazakhstan’s first step to a super-presidential system was the adoption of a new constitution in 1995 that was pushed by Nursultan Nazarbayev after dissolving an uncooperative parliament. Nazarbayev further 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 barely redistributed presidential powers to different branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of native representatives, a minimum of at the village level. Nonetheless, 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 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, several proposed provisions would slightly prohibit the power of the president. The president shouldn't be a member of a political social gathering, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva referred to as “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 celebration – on April 26. Moreover, the president can not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and close family members of the president cannot maintain 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 power between the higher and lower homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will not have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will just approve or reject laws handed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the process for choosing deputies to both homes will change. 

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

Second, Mazhilis deputies can be elected according to a combined system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies can be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % might be straight elected.

The only proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Courtroom. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Courtroom until the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Court’s make-up, nevertheless, with the ability to pick out the court docket’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasised the importance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that will carry government bodies nearer to the populations they characterize. Maybe essentially the most disappointing facet of proposed reforms is the lack of significant movement 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 – however, the candidates will have been chosen by the president. The precise to elect local leadership has been one of the vital consistent calls for from Almaty residents, and this try and create selection is finally cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are essential steps toward actual representative authorities in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they don't essentially constitute ahead motion. Lots of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, fairly than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.