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

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

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

The vote will happen on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms have been released. The reform package deal addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the entire 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 robust parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union tackle on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are only nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have practically unlimited 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 further consolidated his personal 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, a minimum of at the village degree. However, 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 constitution of mentions of elbasy and the First President of the Republic, which some see as a continued sign of the Nazarbayev family’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would barely prohibit the power of the president. The president should not be a member of a political celebration, 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 party – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Additionally, the president can not override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and close family members of the president cannot maintain political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament extra energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the upper and lower homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will not have the power to make new laws, and as a substitute will simply approve or reject laws handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the method for choosing deputies to both homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis shall be lowered to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Assembly of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats will probably be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now only get to nominate 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president can be diminished from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies might be elected in response to a combined system. Seventy p.c of Mazhilis deputies shall be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 percent will likely be directly elected.

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

Tokayev has emphasised the significance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may convey authorities bodies nearer to the populations they represent. Perhaps probably the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the lack of great movement on local illustration 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 can have been selected by the president. The appropriate to elect local management has been one of the crucial consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create alternative is ultimately beauty.

The proposed reforms are important steps toward real representative authorities in Kazakhstan; however, they don't necessarily constitute forward motion. Many of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, somewhat than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.