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 assist from the Russian-backed Collective Safety Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, citizens will participate in a referendum on constitutional reforms. 

The vote will take place on June 5, just one month after the proposed reforms have been released. The reform package deal addresses 33 separate articles – about one third of the full constitutional articles – and was developed by a working group that Tokayev established in March. The reforms are said to rework Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a strong 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 unbiased, and the president and their administration have nearly unlimited control over political decision-making. Kazakhstan’s first step to a super-presidential system was the adoption of a brand new constitution in 1995 that was pushed by Nursultan Nazarbayev after dissolving an uncooperative parliament. Nazarbayev additional 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 barely redistributed presidential powers to other branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of local representatives, no less than at the village stage. However, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal control over Kazakhstan’s politics by together with provisions that protected him as “elbasy,” or leader of the nation.

Get briefed on the story of the week, and developing stories to observe throughout the Asia-Pacific.

The proposed constitutional reforms strip the constitution of mentions of elbasy and the First President of the Republic, which some see as a continued sign of the Nazarbayev household’s fall from grace. 

Enjoying this text? Click on here to subscribe for full access. Simply $5 a month.

Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, a number of proposed provisions would barely limit the facility 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 social gathering – a rebranded version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan social gathering – on April 26. Moreover, the president can no longer override the acts of akims of oblasts, main cities, or the capital and shut family members of the president can't hold political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament extra energy vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will remain bicameral, however the distribution of energy between the upper and lower houses will shift somewhat. The Senate will now not have the power to make new legal guidelines, and as an alternative will just approve or reject legal guidelines passed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the process for choosing deputies to each homes will change. 

First, the Mazhilis shall be lowered to 98 deputies, following the abolition of 9 seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. These seats will likely be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to appoint five deputies. The number of deputies appointed by the president will probably be diminished from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will be elected in line with a blended system. Seventy percent of Mazhilis deputies shall be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 p.c might be straight elected.

The one proposed adjustments to the judicial system relate to the reestablishment of the Constitutional Court. Kazakhstan had a Constitutional Court docket until the adoption of the 1995 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president still maintains a strong influence over the Constitutional Court docket’s make-up, nonetheless, with the ability to select the court’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasised the significance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that may deliver government bodies nearer to the populations they characterize. Perhaps probably the most disappointing aspect of proposed reforms is the lack of significant movement on native representation 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 – nonetheless, the candidates will have been chosen by the president. The fitting to elect local leadership has been one of the vital consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this try and create selection is in the end cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are necessary steps toward actual representative government in Kazakhstan; however, they do not essentially represent ahead motion. Lots of the amendments are merely reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that beforehand existed, relatively than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.