Kazakhs voted Sunday in a constitutional referendum that authorities say will strengthen democracy -- though several proposed amendments appear rather to boost presidential powers in Central Asia’s richest country.
The vote on changing around 80 percent of the country’s basic law has been pushed by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who is seeking to balance the resource-rich former Soviet republic’s ties between the European Union, Russia and China.
Three exit polls published by state media indicated that between about 87 and 89 percent of voters had approved the amendments. Officials said turnout was more than 73 percent.
After 2022 protests over the cost of living escalated into riots and left 238 people dead, the president pledged to liberalise the political system to build a “just Kazakhstan”.
Announcing the amendments in February, he said: “Kazakhstan is once and for all moving away from a super-presidential form of rule and transitioning to a presidential republic with a strong parliament.”
Tokayev, a Soviet-educated former diplomat who speaks fluent Chinese, said his proposals would essentially create a “new system of state governance” that would “allow for the redistribution of power” and “strengthen the checks and balances system”.
However, several proposals indicate the opposite: the president would be able to appoint top officials such as the heads of the central bank, the intelligence services and the constitutional court.
The positions currently require approval from the Senate, the parliament’s upper chamber, which would be abolished under the amendments.
Instead, a new single-chamber assembly, the Kurultai, would be created. But the head of state would be able to dissolve it and rule by executive orders if the parliament refuses to approve presidential nominees to key posts twice.
The amendments provide for a further tightening of freedom of speech, stating that it must not “undermine the morality of society or violate public order”, according to the draft text.
Demonstrations -- already rare in Kazakhstan -- could also face further limitations.
The sweeping constitutional overhaul was proposed just a month ago and then rushed through a two-week campaign that saw little criticism.
International observers say elections in Kazakhstan are often predictable and tend to ratify decisions taken by the leadership, as across much of post-Soviet Central Asia.
Tokayev brands himself as a reformer seeking to break with the country’s authoritarian past, but rights groups say democratic institutions remain tightly controlled.
To boost turnout and support for the referendum, authorities have involved famous athletes and mobilised workers in mining and oil industries -- two important sectors in the Kazakh economy.
Several critics of the reforms have been summoned by police or briefly detained, while journalists who published independent opinion polls have been fined.
One voter in the capital, 60-year-old logistics professional Ashirbek Berdibekov, told AFP he supported the amendments, saying: “A Kazakh citizen must support Kazakh policies.”
But another citizen, retiree Nazarbay Bliyev, 90, said he was “worried” by the speed with which the amendments had been launched.
“It’s all going very quickly, without leaving enough time for discussion.”
Political analyst Viktor Kovtunovsky said the measures constituted a “dismantling of liberal concessions” Tokayev had been forced to make in recent years.
He saw the speedy process as a bid by the president to “prepare the throne for his successor” -- likely to be whoever takes the new post of vice-president, created under the amendments.
Global NGO Human Rights Watch branded the measures a threat to civil liberties.
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