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

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

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev known as protesters terrorists and requested help 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 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 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 robust parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union handle on March 16.

A brilliant-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are solely nominally impartial, and the president and their administration have nearly 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 slightly redistributed presidential powers to other branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of local representatives, no less than at the village level. However, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private management 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 signal of the Nazarbayev family’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would barely limit the power of the president. The president should not be a member of a political get together, 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 party – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Additionally, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and close members of the family of the president can't hold political posts.

Several 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 decrease houses will shift considerably. The Senate will not have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will just approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for choosing deputies to both homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will probably be diminished to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Assembly 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 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president might be lowered from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will be elected according to a mixed system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies might be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % can be immediately elected.

The only proposed modifications to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Courtroom until the adoption of the 1995 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a powerful influence over the Constitutional Court’s makeup, nevertheless, with the flexibility to pick the court’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other 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 carry government our bodies closer to the populations they represent. Perhaps essentially the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the dearth of serious motion 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 could have been chosen by the president. The right to elect native management has been one of the most consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this try and create choice is finally beauty.

The proposed reforms are important steps towards actual consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they do not necessarily represent forward motion. Most of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, moderately than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.