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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle 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 known as protesters terrorists and requested help from the Russian-backed Collective Safety Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, citizens will participate in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will happen on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms have been launched. The reform package addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the whole constitutional articles – and was developed by a working group that Tokayev established in March. The reforms are mentioned to rework 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.

A super-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are only nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have practically limitless management over political decision-making. Kazakhstan’s first step to a super-presidential system was the adoption of a brand new constitution in 1995 that was pushed by Nursultan Nazarbayev after dissolving an uncooperative parliament. Nazarbayev additional consolidated his private 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 different branches of presidency and opened the trail for the election of native representatives, a minimum of on the village degree. 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 sign of the Nazarbayev household’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would slightly prohibit 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 modification, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat occasion – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan get together – on April 26. Additionally, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut relations 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 laws, and instead will just approve or reject laws handed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for choosing deputies to each houses will change. 

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

Second, Mazhilis deputies might be elected in line with a mixed system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies will be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % will be directly elected.

The one proposed changes 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 robust affect over the Constitutional Court docket’s make-up, nonetheless, with the power to pick the courtroom’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the other 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 may deliver government bodies nearer to the populations they represent. Maybe probably the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the shortage of great movement 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 – however, the candidates will have been chosen by the president. The appropriate to elect native leadership has been one of the vital consistent calls for from Almaty residents, and this try and create selection is in the end beauty.

The proposed reforms are vital steps towards real consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they do not necessarily represent forward movement. Many of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, relatively than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.