Is There a New Kazakhstan?

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has faced protests since shortly after he was made Kazakhstan’s acting president on March 19, 2019. The man who handed him the presidency, first President Nursultan Nazarbayev, had many powers and privileges written into the constitution that guaranteed he would continue to be a major influence in Kazakhstan even when he was no longer officially president. This was one of the foremost reasons for the protests in 2019, that the change at the top was cosmetic. And nothing substantial changed for more than two years with Tokayev as president. Some wondered who was actually leading the country.

Peaceful protests at the start of 2022 were hijacked and evolved into the worst violence Kazakhstan had seen since becoming independent in late 1991. It resulted in the end of Nazarbayev’s years of influence, but created new problems for Tokayev. Tokayev had served in various roles in Nazarbayev’s government since shortly after independence and it was not easy to refute the past and move forward. In the meantime, there were many questions about how Tokayev had quelled the January violence and emerged solely in control of Kazakhstan.

Even after the January violence, Kazakhstan was still not moving forward. So in late April, Tokayev called for sweeping amendments to the constitution that he said would propel the country forward, creating a “New Kazakhstan” and even a “Second Republic.” In a nod to the people who had been calling for greater public participation in governing Kazakhstan, Tokayev said the changes to the constitution were so important that a national referendum would be needed, so that the people could decide the country’s future.

Something Has to Change Now

The referendum was conducted on June 5, five months to the day after violence broke out in several large cities during nationwide protests. The protests in January were peaceful when they started as isolated demonstrations in western Kazakhstan against an increase in the cost of fuel. They evolved into protests against the entrenched system of government that came to fruition under Nazarbayev and the state’s failure to deal with socioeconomic problems. The protests rapidly spread across the country.

January 5 was the day elements within the government, apparently loyal to Nazarbayev, sparked violence, hoping to oust Tokayev. The head of the Committee for National Security was arrested. The arrests of other officials followed. Nazarbayev was dismissed from his post as secretary of Kazakhstan’s Security Council.

Tokayev said publicly that terrorists were to blame for the violence and called on the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to send troops and help restore order in Kazakhstan. The CSTO complied and for the first time in its 30 years of existence sent peacekeepers to a member state in trouble, much to the displeasure of some Kazakh citizens who saw the presence of troops from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan as a sign that Kazakhstan was losing its sovereignty.

Kazakh security forces and police were responsible for restoring order and they did, though at least 238 people were killed, thousands of people were initially detained, some were tortured, and hundreds still remain in custody.

Kazakh authorities have not provided a full account of the actual events of “Bloody January.” The “terrorists” Tokayev spoke about at the height of the violence are rarely mentioned now. No one in the government will say anything about an attempted coup from within.

Tokayev’s image in the eyes of many people in Kazakhstan was badly damaged by the January events. His reluctance to pursue investigations of Nazarbayev and his family, who had all become fabulously wealthy through plundering Kazakhstan, irritated many. And Tokayev’s continued promises of reforms to come were worn out words with no actions to back them up.

The referendum on Tokayev’s proposed amendments to the constitution seemed designed to satisfy many of the demands of the people, and catchy phrases like “New Kazakhstan” and “Second Republic” raised hopes that meaningful changes that would benefit Kazakhstan’s people were coming.

Conducting a referendum was something new for most of Kazakhstan’s people. The last referendum, also on changes to the constitution, was held on August 30, 1995. Nearly half of Kazakhstan’s population were not even born then and another 25 percent would have been too young to vote at that time.

But from the start there were signs that, buzzwords aside, nothing new was coming.

There was no social discussion of the proposed amendments to the constitution. There was some debate during parliament’s review of the document, but on May 4, the Mazhilis, the lower house of Kazakhstan’s parliament, approved the draft. The Senate, the upper house of parliament, made some changes concerning the constitutional status of Nazarbayev as first president and “Elbasy,” or Leader of the Nation, and sent the document back to the Mazhilis.

There were 56 changes to 33 of the 98 articles of the Kazakh Constitution. But unfortunately, though perhaps understandably, much of the initial coverage of the amendments focused on how Nazarbayev would be stripped of the immense powers that benefited him personally, which were written into the constitution in amendments introduced in 1998, 2007, 2011, and 2017, and clauses added in 2000.

A sign of how personalized Kazakhstan’s constitution had become was Article 91, Section 2, introduced in 2017, which stated, “… Elbasy, and his status established by the Constitution may not be changed.”

People have been chanting “Shal ket,” Kazakh for “get out old man,” for several years at protests. At first the phrase was specifically targeted at Nazarbayev, but after Tokayev became president, it came to mean more generally an end to the system that had developed under Nazarbayev. Cries of “Shal ket” were again prominent during the January 2022 protests, nearly three years after Nazarbayev had stepped down as president.

The constitutional amendments approved in the referendum in June 2022 officially ended Nazarbayev’s political career in Kazakhstan, which was probably welcomed by more than a few people in the country. Gone from the constitution are mentions of “Kazakhstan’s first president” and “Elbasy.” Protesters called for “Shal ket,” and the old man is now gone.

But the amendments do little to change the overall Kazakh political system.

The “super” presidential form of government is slightly downgraded to simply a “presidential” form of government after some powers were transferred from the executive to the legislative branch.

This was advertised as creating a stronger parliament at the expense of presidential powers, but as Colleen Wood pointed out in an article for The Diplomat ahead of the referendum, many of the changes for parliament involved the number of seats and readjustment of responsibilities for the two houses of parliament. Since the Mazhilis is filled with the same three pro-government parties – Amanat (formerly Nur-Otan), Ak Zhol, and the People’s Party of Kazakhstan – that have been sitting since 2012, and members of the Senate are not elected in a popular vote, giving more power to parliament seems to make little difference. There is almost no doubt that parliament will continue take its cues from the president.

The Amanat party currently has 76 of the 98 elected seats in the Mazhilis. Tokayev was the head of the Amanat party until late April when he stepped down, knowing one of the constitutional amendments would bar a standing president from being head of a political party. Yerlan Koshanov became the chairman of Amanat after that. Koshanov is also the speaker of the Mazhilis.

The new amendments will, in theory, make it easier for political parties to be registered. The number of members needed to register will be lowered from 20,000 to 5,000 (it was raised from 3,000 to 50,000 in 2002), but the rule that each party must have members and branch offices in all of Kazakhstan provinces remains (previously it was 14 provinces but now it’s 17 after Tokayev announced the creation of three new provinces on March 16, 2022).

Smaller parties with limited funding will find it difficult to meet that requirement. And recent incidents indicate genuine opposition parties will not be registered anytime soon.

On the day the referendum was announced, the Justice Ministry rejected an application from the opposition group Alga (Forward) Kazakhstan to register as a political party. Leader Zhasaral Kuanyshalin said the Justice Ministry told Alga Kazakhstan there were problems with some of the 1,600 names on the petition to register and said that party would have to double-check the petition, the ministry but did not specify which names were problematic.

On May 11, Bulat Abilov called off a planned May 12 press conference where he intended to announce the creation of a new opposition political party after the hotel where he booked a reception hall suddenly canceled the reservation. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book in Central Asia to disrupt the public events of nascent opposition parties: sudden power outages, surprise construction work, unexplained venue cancelations.

Abilov finally did hold a press conference on May 16 and announced the creation of the Bizdin Tandau (Our Choice) political party, though whether it will achieve registration is unclear (and unlikely).

Days after the referendum, on June 10, an Almaty court ordered Zhanbolat Mamai, the leader of the unregistered Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, to be held in custody for an additional month. Mamai has been in custody since February 26, when he was detained after organizing a memorial gathering for the people killed during the January unrest. Mamai faces charges of violating rules on holding public meetings, spreading false information, and insulting members of law enforcement agencies.

As The Diplomat’s Catherine Putz noted in a recent article, Mamai’s case illustrates the challenges any genuine opposition party still faces in “New Kazakhstan,” and makes it unlikely that any genuine opposition parties will be registered in time to take part in the snap parliamentary elections many expect to be called soon.

Another change to the constitution is a shift to a mixed election process in contests for seats in the Mazhilis. Now 30 percent of seats will be chosen through voting in single-mandate districts with the remaining 70 percent filled through party lists.

Tokayev noted that under the previous system, when all the seats were filled through party lists, many voters had no idea who their representative in parliament was. However, it has been noted that some of the 30 voting districts created in the vast territory of Kazakhstan will be enormous and difficult for candidates, or eventually the parliamentary deputy, to tour.

An interesting aspect of deputies elected in single-mandate districts is that they can be recalled if they fail to “satisfy the needs of society,” per the amendments.

While the addition of single-mandate voting might make the faces of some deputies more recognizable to constituents, it should be pointed out that Kyrgyzstan had similar parliamentary elections that used both single-mandate districts and party lists in November 2021 and most of the seats in single-mandate districts were won by pro-presidential candidates. They had more access to funding and better networks of people campaigning for them. Kazakhstan differs significantly from Kyrgyzstan, but there is no reason to believe money will not play a large role in the victories of Mazhilis candidates in the future.

The return of the Constitutional Court, which will replace the Constitutional Council, also seems a bit oversold. Kazakh State Secretary Yerlan Karin said the “the institute of constitutional control is being modernized with the establishment of the Constitutional Court.”

In 1995, the Constitutional Court played a curious role in Nazarbayev’s move to dissolve parliament, which in December 1994 had rejected his proposals for amendments to the constitution. Questions arose after that rejection about the legitimacy of the March 1994 parliamentary elections based on the complaint of one defeated candidate (Tatyana Kvyatkovskaya), which had gone relatively unnoticed until early 1995.

The Constitutional Court heard the case and on March 6, 1995, ruled there were violations, in addition to the original complaint. The court declared the 1994 parliamentary elections to be illegitimate.

Nazarbayev expressed surprise, vetoed the Constitutional Court’s decision, and sent it back to the court for review. Nazarbayev said he had “great hopes” for the parliament. In a televised interview on March 9, he said, “I support stability of power, and that is why I could not remain silent about this event.” He called the court’s decision unfounded and said the matter in any case did not fall under the court’s jurisdiction.

The next day the court overruled Nazarbayev’s veto and said its decision was already in effect.

On March 11, the parliament submitted a motion calling on Nazarbayev to suspend the Constitutional Court, to which Nazarbayev replied, “I do not have to sign the proposals of an assembly that no longer exists.” Parliament was officially dissolved.

On March 24, the Assembly of Peoples, which was formed shortly before parliament was dissolved, called for holding a national referendum to bypass the scheduled 1996 presidential election and keep Nazarbayev in office until 2000.

That referendum was held, and the extension of Nazarbayev’s term approved, on April 29, 1995. By June of that year, Nazarbayev was calling for a referendum on changes to the constitution that gave him more powers. A casualty of that second referendum was the Constitutional Court, which was annulled.

There are two particularly interesting pieces of trivia from the 1995 referendum.

The results of the vote (90 percent of eligible voters cast ballots and 89 percent voted for the changes) were announced by the head of the Central Election Commission, Yuri Kim, who shortly after was appointed head of the Constitutional Council that came to replace the Constitutional Court.

The U.S. State Department criticized the referendum as being undemocratic, but that criticism was rejected by Kazakhstan’s then-foreign minister, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who said the people of Kazakhstan had voted for the changes.

The new Constitutional Court, which will soon take up its duties, will be headed by a chairman, selected by the president with the approval of the Senate, and have 10 more judges, four named by the president, and three each named by the Mazhilis and Senate.

It is not clear how any of this answers the demands of protesters for the people to have more say in government, though. From the start of the process of preparing for and conducting the referendum, it was obvious the people were being left out of participating in these changes.

Tokayev formed a working group to draft proposals for amendments to the constitution. Among its members were representatives of the National Council for Public Trust, a group formed in the wake of the widespread protests that followed Tokayev being named acting president, then elected to that post in June 2019. The council was supposed to act as bridge for communications between the people and the government, but genuine opposition figures and activists avoided it. And while it continues to function, the events of early January 2022 demonstrate it has not been successful in opening a real dialogue between the people and the state.

As previously noted, there was no public discussion about the proposed changes and when they were approved and published, State Secretary Karin said, “It may be difficult for many of you to immediately see the difference between the old and new editions of the Constitution.”

However, if the people cannot see the difference soon, it will be a problem for Tokayev going forward.

Tokayev’s authorization for the use of lethal force to restore order in several cities where violence broke out in early January, his unsubstantiated claim that some 20,000 foreign terrorists were responsible for the violence, and subsequent request for foreign troops from the Russian-led CSTO to be deployed in Kazakhstan to deal with the alleged threat to Kazakhstan’s sovereignty are still unresolved issues with many in Kazakhstan.

Other unresolved issues include the many people still held in custody for their alleged roles in the January unrest, the fact that Nazarbayev and his immediate family members will not be investigated for all the wealth they accumulated during the first 30 years of Kazakhstan’s independence, and the lack of information about who was involved in the attempt to oust Tokayev in January.

The reality seems to be that Tokayev does not have much popular support.

The “New Kazakhstan” Tokayev is touting needs to include domestic political and economic reforms, but there is no indication the amendments that were just passed address the changes for which many people in Kazakhstan have been calling.