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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package deal of reforms supposed to rework the country 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 support from the Russian-backed Collective Safety Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, residents will take part 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 deal addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the total 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 powerful parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union address 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 nearly limitless control 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 started 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 on the village stage. Nevertheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private 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 constitution 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 barely 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 referred to as “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat party – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Additionally, the president can not override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and close family members 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 stay bicameral, however the distribution of energy between the upper and lower houses will shift somewhat. The Senate will now not have the facility to make new laws, and as an alternative will simply approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for choosing deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis might be lowered to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. These seats will be transferred to the Senate, and the Meeting of the Peoples will now solely get to appoint 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will likely be reduced from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies can be elected in accordance with a mixed system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies will probably be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 percent can be instantly elected.

The only proposed modifications to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Courtroom till the adoption of the 1995 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a powerful influence over the Constitutional Court’s make-up, however, with the flexibility to pick the courtroom’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 can carry authorities bodies nearer to the populations they signify. Perhaps the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the lack of serious motion on local representation 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 – nevertheless, the candidates could have been selected by the president. The right to elect native management has been one of the vital constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create choice is in the end cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are important steps toward real consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they do not necessarily constitute forward 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.