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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package deal of reforms meant to rework 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 assist from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, citizens will take part in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will happen on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms had been released. The reform package addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the total 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 handle on March 16.

A brilliant-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are only nominally impartial, and the president and their administration have almost limitless 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 additional 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 barely redistributed presidential powers to different branches of presidency and opened the trail for the election of local representatives, no less than at the village degree. Nevertheless, 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 family’s fall from grace. 

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Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several proposed provisions would slightly restrict the power of the president. The president should not be a member of a political party, which member of the working group Sara Idrysheva known as “the bravest step of our esteemed president.” In anticipation of this modification, Tokayev stepped down as chairman of the Amanat occasion – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan celebration – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and shut members of the family of the president cannot hold political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the higher and decrease homes will shift considerably. The Senate will not have the facility to make new laws, and as an alternative will simply approve or reject legal guidelines handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for selecting deputies to each houses will change. 

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

Second, Mazhilis deputies can be elected based on a blended system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies can be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 % will be immediately elected.

The one proposed changes to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Courtroom. 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 Courtroom’s make-up, however, with the power to pick out the court’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the other three.

Tokayev has emphasized the importance of native governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that can deliver authorities our bodies nearer to the populations they represent. Maybe essentially the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the lack of serious movement 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 – however, the candidates will have been chosen by the president. The fitting to elect local leadership has been one of the constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this try to create choice is in the end cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps towards actual consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; nonetheless, they do not essentially constitute forward movement. Many of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that beforehand existed, somewhat than materially changing the relationship between state and society, as Tokayev claims.