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

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

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called protesters terrorists and requested help 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 happen on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms were released. The reform bundle 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 rework Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union deal with on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are only nominally independent, and the president and their administration have almost limitless 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 further 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 different branches of presidency and opened the trail for the election of native representatives, at the least at the village stage. Nevertheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private control over Kazakhstan’s politics by including provisions that protected him as “elbasy,” or leader 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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In addition to 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 celebration, 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 party – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan occasion – on April 26. Additionally, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut relations of the president cannot hold 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 decrease homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will not have the facility to make new legal guidelines, and instead will just approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the method for choosing deputies to each houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis can 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 Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to nominate 5 deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president can be reduced from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies shall be elected in accordance with a combined system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies can be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % will be straight elected.

The one proposed changes to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court docket. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Courtroom till the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a strong influence over the Constitutional Court docket’s makeup, nevertheless, with the ability to pick out the court’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasized the significance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that can deliver authorities bodies closer to the populations they represent. Maybe the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the lack of serious motion on native 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 selected by the president. The appropriate to elect local leadership has been some of the constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create alternative is ultimately cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are important steps towards real representative authorities in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they don't essentially constitute ahead motion. Most of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that beforehand existed, quite than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.