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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package deal of reforms intended to transform the nation from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust parliament.”

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called protesters terrorists and requested assist from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Organization to quell mass unrest, residents will take part in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will take place on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms were launched. The reform package deal addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the overall 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 handle on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are solely nominally impartial, 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 structure 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 began to loosen the president’s management with constitutional amendments in 2017 that barely redistributed presidential powers to other branches of government and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, not less than on the village degree. Nevertheless, 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 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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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would slightly limit the facility of the president. The president shouldn't 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 modification, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat occasion – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Moreover, the president can not override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut 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 remain bicameral, but the distribution of power between the upper and lower homes will shift considerably. The Senate will no longer have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will simply approve or reject legal guidelines passed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the method for choosing deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will be diminished to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats might be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to nominate five deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president shall be reduced from 15 to 10.

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

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

Tokayev has emphasized the significance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may deliver authorities our bodies nearer to the populations they represent. Perhaps probably the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the shortage 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 may have been selected by the president. The precise to elect native leadership has been some of the constant demands from Almaty residents, and this try and create alternative is ultimately beauty.

The proposed reforms are important steps toward real consultant government in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they don't essentially represent forward motion. Many of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that beforehand existed, relatively than materially altering the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.