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

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

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

The vote will take place on June 5, only one month after the proposed reforms were launched. The reform package deal 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 mentioned to transform Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a powerful parliament,” per Tokayev’s state of the union handle on March 16.

A super-presidential system is one where parliaments and courts are only nominally unbiased, and the president and their administration have practically limitless 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 further 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 government and opened the trail for the election of native representatives, a minimum of at the village level. Nevertheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal 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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In addition to sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would slightly limit the power 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 party – a rebranded model of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan celebration – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, major cities, or the capital and close members of the family of the president cannot maintain political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, however the distribution of power between the upper and lower homes will shift considerably. The Senate will no longer have the ability to make new laws, and instead will simply approve or reject laws passed by the Mazhilis. Moreover, the method for choosing deputies to both houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis will probably be diminished to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. Those 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 probably be reduced from 15 to 10.

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

The one proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court docket. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court docket till the adoption of the 1995 structure, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a strong influence over the Constitutional Courtroom’s makeup, nevertheless, with the flexibility to pick out the court’s chairman and 4 of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite 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 can bring government our bodies closer to the populations they represent. Perhaps essentially the most disappointing facet of proposed reforms is the lack of great 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 will have been selected by the president. The precise to elect local leadership has been one of the vital constant calls for from Almaty residents, and this attempt to create selection is in the end beauty.

The proposed reforms are vital steps towards real representative authorities in Kazakhstan; however, they do not necessarily represent ahead motion. Lots of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential power that beforehand existed, fairly than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.