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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle of reforms meant to transform 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 help from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Organization to quell mass unrest, residents will take part in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will take place on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms have been released. The reform package addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the entire constitutional articles – and was developed by a working group that Tokayev established in March. The reforms are stated to remodel Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a powerful parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union handle 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 unlimited 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 additional consolidated his personal powers with constitutional amendments in 1998, 2007, and 2011.

Nazarbayev began to loosen the president’s management 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, at the least at the village level. However, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private 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 family’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would slightly limit the facility 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 amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat celebration – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan occasion – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and close family members of the president can't maintain political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament extra power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the higher and lower homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will no longer have the facility to make new laws, and as a substitute will just approve or reject legal guidelines passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for selecting deputies to both houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis can be reduced to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats shall be transferred to the Senate, and the Meeting of the Peoples will now only get to appoint 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president can be reduced from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will be elected based on a blended system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies will be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 percent shall be instantly elected.

The one 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 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a robust affect over the Constitutional Court’s make-up, however, with the ability to pick out the court docket’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasized the importance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that can convey authorities our bodies nearer to the populations they symbolize. 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 may have been selected by the president. The right to elect local leadership has been one of the vital consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this try to create selection is finally beauty.

The proposed reforms are essential steps toward real representative government in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they do not necessarily represent forward motion. Lots of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, moderately than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.