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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package deal of reforms supposed to transform the nation 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 Group to quell mass unrest, citizens will participate in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will take place on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms were released. The reform package addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the total 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 strong parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union tackle on March 16.

A brilliant-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are solely nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have practically unlimited control 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 personal powers with constitutional amendments in 1998, 2007, and 2011.

Nazarbayev began to loosen the president’s control with constitutional amendments in 2017 that slightly redistributed presidential powers to different branches of government and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, no less than on the village degree. Nonetheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private control over Kazakhstan’s politics by together with 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 signal of the Nazarbayev family’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would barely prohibit the ability 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 amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat celebration – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – 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 can not maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament extra power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, however the distribution of energy between the upper and decrease homes will shift considerably. The Senate will now not have the power to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will just approve or reject laws handed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the process for choosing deputies to both homes will change. 

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

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

The one proposed modifications to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Courtroom. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court till the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Courtroom’s makeup, nonetheless, with the power to select the courtroom’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasized 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 represent. Maybe essentially the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the shortage of significant movement on native 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 – nonetheless, the candidates could have been chosen by the president. The right to elect local leadership has been one of the vital consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create choice is in the end cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are important steps towards actual consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they do not essentially represent forward movement. Lots of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, moderately than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.