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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package deal of reforms meant to remodel the nation from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong parliament.”

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev known as protesters terrorists and requested assist 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 take place on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms had been launched. 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 stated to transform Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union handle on March 16.

A brilliant-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are solely nominally independent, and the president and their administration have nearly 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, at the least at the village stage. Nonetheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal management over Kazakhstan’s politics by including 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 signal of the Nazarbayev household’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would barely restrict the power of the president. The president should not 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 version 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 members of the family of the president cannot hold political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament extra power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, but the distribution of power between the upper and decrease homes will shift considerably. The Senate will now not have the power to make new laws, and as a substitute will simply approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for choosing deputies to each houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will probably be decreased to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats might be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to nominate 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will likely be lowered from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies can be elected in response to a mixed system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies shall be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % will be directly elected.

The only proposed changes to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court docket till the adoption of the 1995 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Court’s make-up, nonetheless, with the ability to pick the court docket’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasised the significance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may carry authorities our bodies closer to the populations they represent. Perhaps probably the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the lack of significant movement on local illustration for residents of Kazakhstan’s largest cities. If the referendum passes, Kazakhstanis will get to vote for akims of oblasts, major cities, and the capital – nonetheless, the candidates will have been chosen by the president. The precise to elect local leadership has been one of the most constant demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create selection is finally cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are vital steps toward actual consultant government in Kazakhstan; however, they do not essentially constitute ahead movement. Many of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that previously existed, fairly than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.