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 referred to 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 happen on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms have been launched. The reform package 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 said to transform Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union deal with on March 16.

An excellent-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are solely nominally unbiased, 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 brand new structure in 1995 that was pushed by Nursultan Nazarbayev after dissolving an uncooperative parliament. Nazarbayev further 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 barely redistributed presidential powers to other branches of government and opened the path for the election of local representatives, not less than at the village degree. 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 sign of the Nazarbayev family’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would slightly limit the power of the president. The president should not be a member of a political party, 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 celebration – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and close members of the family of the president can't maintain political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament more power 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 now not have the power to make new legal guidelines, and instead will just approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for selecting deputies to each houses 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 can be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now only get to appoint 5 deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president shall be lowered from 15 to 10.

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

The one proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Courtroom. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court until the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Courtroom’s make-up, nonetheless, with the power to pick out the court’s chairman and four 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 convey authorities bodies closer to the populations they characterize. Perhaps probably the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the dearth of great 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 – however, the candidates may have been chosen by the president. The appropriate to elect native management has been one of the consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this try to create alternative is ultimately cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are vital steps towards actual consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they don't essentially constitute forward movement. Many of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, moderately than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.