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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package deal of reforms intended to rework the country from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a robust 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, 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 bundle 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 powerful parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union address on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one the place parliaments and courts are only nominally impartial, 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 brand new structure in 1995 that was pushed by Nursultan Nazarbayev after dissolving an uncooperative parliament. Nazarbayev further consolidated his private 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 government and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, at the very least on the village level. Nevertheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private management 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 family’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would barely restrict the ability of the president. The president should not be a member of a political occasion, 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 model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Moreover, the president can now not override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut members of the family of the president can't maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of power between the upper and decrease homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will not have the power to make new laws, and as an alternative will simply approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the process for selecting deputies to both houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis might be decreased to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those seats shall be transferred to the Senate, and the Meeting of the Peoples will now only get to appoint five deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president will be diminished from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies might be elected in line with a combined system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies will probably be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 percent will likely be immediately elected.

The only proposed modifications to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Courtroom. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court docket till the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a strong influence over the Constitutional Court’s make-up, however, with the flexibility to pick out the court’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasized the importance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that will carry authorities our bodies closer to the populations they represent. Maybe probably the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the dearth of significant motion 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 can have been chosen by the president. The correct to elect local leadership has been one of the constant demands from Almaty residents, and this try and create choice is in the end beauty.

The proposed reforms are important steps towards actual representative authorities in Kazakhstan; however, they don't essentially represent ahead movement. Many of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that previously existed, relatively than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.