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

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

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called protesters terrorists and requested help from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Organization to quell mass unrest, citizens 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 bundle 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 said 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 where parliaments and courts are only nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have nearly 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 further 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 slightly redistributed presidential powers to different branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of local representatives, no less than on the village level. However, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal 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 constitution of mentions of elbasy and the First President of the Republic, which some see as a continued signal of the Nazarbayev household’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would barely limit the ability of the president. The president should not be a member of a political party, 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 celebration – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan get together – on April 26. Additionally, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and close family members of the president cannot maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the higher and lower homes will shift considerably. The Senate will not have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and as an alternative will just approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for choosing deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will probably be lowered to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats will be transferred to the Senate, and the Meeting of the Peoples will now solely get to nominate 5 deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president will probably be reduced from 15 to 10.

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

The only proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Courtroom till the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a powerful influence over the Constitutional Courtroom’s makeup, nonetheless, with the flexibility to select the court docket’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasised the significance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that will convey government our bodies nearer to the populations they characterize. Perhaps the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the shortage of great motion on local representation 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 – nevertheless, the candidates could have been selected by the president. The precise to elect native leadership has been one of the crucial consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create choice is ultimately cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are vital steps toward real representative authorities in Kazakhstan; however, they do not essentially represent ahead motion. Lots of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, quite than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.