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

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

Six months after Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev known as protesters terrorists and requested support from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Group 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 have been launched. The reform bundle addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the whole constitutional articles – and was developed by a working group that Tokayev established in March. The reforms are stated to remodel Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong 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 independent, and the president and their administration have nearly limitless control 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 further 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 barely redistributed presidential powers to different branches of presidency and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, at the very least on 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 structure of mentions of elbasy and the First President of the Republic, which some see as a continued signal of the Nazarbayev household’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would barely prohibit the facility of the president. The president shouldn't be a member of a political social gathering, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva referred to as “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this amendment, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat occasion – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan occasion – on April 26. Additionally, the president can not override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and close family members of the president cannot hold political posts.

Several proposed measures give parliament extra power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, however the distribution of power between the upper and decrease houses will shift considerably. The Senate will not have the power to make new laws, and as a substitute will simply approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for choosing deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis can be reduced to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. These seats can be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now only get to appoint 5 deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will be reduced from 15 to 10.

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

The only proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court till the adoption of the 1995 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a strong affect over the Constitutional Court docket’s makeup, nonetheless, with the flexibility to pick the court docket’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasised the significance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that will deliver government our bodies closer to the populations they signify. 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 – nonetheless, the candidates could have been chosen by the president. The precise to elect native management has been some of the consistent calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create choice is in the end beauty.

The proposed reforms are important steps towards real representative authorities in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they don't essentially represent forward motion. Lots of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, reasonably than materially changing the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.