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

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

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev referred to as protesters terrorists and requested support from the Russian-backed Collective Security 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 released. The reform package deal 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 mentioned to remodel Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union address on March 16.

An excellent-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are only nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have practically 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 further consolidated his private powers with constitutional amendments in 1998, 2007, and 2011.

Nazarbayev began to loosen the president’s control with constitutional amendments in 2017 that barely redistributed presidential powers to other branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of native representatives, at the very least on the village level. Nonetheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal control 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 family’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would barely limit the power of the president. The president shouldn't be a member of a political get together, 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 social gathering – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Moreover, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and shut relations of the president can't hold political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament extra energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, however the distribution of power between the higher and decrease homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will now not have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and instead will just approve or reject laws handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the method for selecting deputies to each homes will change. 

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

Second, Mazhilis deputies will likely be elected in keeping with a mixed system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies might be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 p.c will probably be straight elected.

The only proposed adjustments 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 strong influence over the Constitutional Court docket’s make-up, nonetheless, with the ability to pick out the court docket’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other 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 may convey government our bodies closer to the populations they represent. Maybe essentially the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the dearth of great 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 – however, the candidates could have been chosen by the president. The proper to elect native leadership has been probably the most constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this try to create selection is ultimately beauty.

The proposed reforms are important steps toward actual consultant government in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they don't essentially constitute forward motion. Most of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that beforehand existed, reasonably than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.