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

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

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

The vote will take place on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms had been launched. The reform package deal 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 remodel Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust 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 impartial, 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 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 management with constitutional amendments in 2017 that slightly redistributed presidential powers to other branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of native representatives, at the very least at the village stage. Nevertheless, 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 sign of the Nazarbayev household’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would barely restrict the facility of the president. The president shouldn't be a member of a political celebration, 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 party – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan celebration – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major 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 remain bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the higher and lower homes will shift considerably. The Senate will not have the facility to make new laws, and as an alternative will just approve or reject legal guidelines passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for selecting deputies to each houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will probably be diminished to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine 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 only get to nominate 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will probably be lowered from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will likely be elected in accordance with a combined system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies can be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 p.c will be immediately elected.

The one proposed changes to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Courtroom until the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a robust affect over the Constitutional Courtroom’s make-up, nevertheless, with the power to pick the court docket’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasised the importance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may carry authorities bodies closer to the populations they symbolize. Perhaps essentially the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the dearth 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 can have been selected by the president. The correct to elect local management has been one of the vital constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create alternative is finally cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are vital steps toward real representative authorities in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they do not necessarily represent forward movement. Most of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, slightly than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.