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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a bundle of reforms supposed to remodel the nation 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, residents will take part in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will happen on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms have been released. 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 stated to transform Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union deal with on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are only nominally independent, and the president and their administration have almost unlimited 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 additional consolidated his personal powers with constitutional amendments in 1998, 2007, and 2011.

Nazarbayev began to loosen the president’s control with constitutional amendments in 2017 that barely redistributed presidential powers to different branches of government and opened the path for the election of native representatives, at least on the village degree. However, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal control over Kazakhstan’s politics by together with 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 signal of the Nazarbayev household’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would barely restrict the power of the president. The president should not be a member of a political party, 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 celebration – 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, main cities, or the capital and shut members of the family of the president can not maintain political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament extra energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, however the distribution of power between the higher and decrease homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will now not have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and instead will simply approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the method for choosing deputies to both houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis might be decreased to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. These seats can be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now only get to appoint five deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president might be reduced from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will likely be elected in response to a combined system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies might be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % can be straight elected.

The only proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Courtroom. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Courtroom until the adoption of the 1995 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a robust affect over the Constitutional Court docket’s make-up, however, with the ability to pick the court docket’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasised the importance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may bring government bodies closer to the populations they characterize. Maybe the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the lack of serious movement on local 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 – nevertheless, the candidates will have been selected by the president. The appropriate to elect local management has been one of the vital consistent calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create alternative is finally cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are important steps toward actual consultant government in Kazakhstan; however, they don't essentially represent forward movement. Lots of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, slightly than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.