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

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

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

The vote will happen on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms had been launched. The reform package 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 mentioned to remodel Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union deal with on March 16.

A brilliant-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are solely nominally unbiased, 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 brand 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 management 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, a minimum of on the village degree. Nevertheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his private 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 family’s fall from grace. 

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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of 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 known as “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat celebration – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan occasion – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and shut family members of the president cannot hold political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament extra power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, however the distribution of energy between the upper and lower houses will shift considerably. The Senate will no longer have the power to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will just approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the method for selecting deputies to both homes will change. 

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

Second, Mazhilis deputies will probably be elected according to a blended system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies shall be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 p.c shall be immediately elected.

The one proposed changes 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 nonetheless maintains a powerful affect over the Constitutional Courtroom’s make-up, nevertheless, with the power to pick out the courtroom’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite 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 can carry authorities bodies nearer to the populations they symbolize. Maybe probably the most disappointing side of proposed reforms is the lack 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, main cities, and the capital – nevertheless, the candidates will have been chosen by the president. The correct to elect local management has been one of the vital constant demands from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create alternative is in the end cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are important steps toward actual representative authorities in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they don't necessarily constitute forward motion. Most of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that previously existed, quite than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.