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

On June 5, Kazakhs will vote on a package deal of reforms supposed to transform 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 help from the Russian-backed Collective Security Treaty Group to quell mass unrest, residents 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 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 transform Kazakhstan from a super-presidential system to a “presidential system with a powerful 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 impartial, and the president and their administration have almost limitless control 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 started to loosen the president’s control with constitutional amendments in 2017 that barely redistributed presidential powers to other branches of presidency and opened the path for the election of native representatives, not less than at the village level. Nevertheless, Nazarbayev slyly maintained his personal management over Kazakhstan’s politics by including provisions that protected him as “elbasy,” or chief of the nation.

Get briefed on the story of the week, and creating tales 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. 

Having fun with this text? Click on here to subscribe for full entry. Simply $5 a month.

Along with sidelining Nazarbayev, several 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 version of Nazarbayev’s ruling Nur Otan party – 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 can not hold political posts.

A number of proposed measures give parliament more power vis-a-vis the president. Kazakhstan’s parliament will stay bicameral, but the distribution of energy between the upper and lower homes will shift somewhat. The Senate will now not have the ability to make new legal guidelines, and as a substitute will just approve or reject laws handed by the Mazhilis. Furthermore, the method for selecting deputies to each houses will change. 

First, the Mazhilis might be decreased to 98 deputies, following the abolition of nine seats appointed by the Meeting of the Peoples of Kazakhstan. These seats shall be transferred to the Senate, and the Assembly of the Peoples will now solely get to nominate 5 deputies. The variety of deputies appointed by the president shall be decreased from 15 to 10.

Second, Mazhilis deputies will likely be elected in line with a combined system. Seventy % of Mazhilis deputies might be chosen by proportional elections, and 30 percent will probably be straight elected.

The only proposed changes 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 constitution, which instituted a weaker constitutional council. The president nonetheless maintains a robust influence over the Constitutional Court docket’s make-up, nonetheless, with the power to pick out the court docket’s chairman and four of the judges; parliament chooses the opposite three.

Tokayev has emphasised the importance of local governance, marked by the first-ever direct election of village akims and plans to introduce three new oblasts that will carry government bodies nearer to the populations they signify. Perhaps essentially the most disappointing facet of proposed reforms is the shortage of significant motion on local 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 – nevertheless, the candidates could have been selected by the president. The fitting to elect native leadership has been one of the crucial consistent demands from Almaty residents, and this try to create selection is finally cosmetic.

The proposed reforms are essential steps toward actual consultant authorities in Kazakhstan; nevertheless, they do not essentially constitute ahead motion. Many of the amendments are simply reinstating mechanisms of checks on presidential energy that beforehand existed, reasonably than materially altering the connection between state and society, as Tokayev claims.