Nazarbaev Could be President for Life

A constitutional reform allowing Kazak president Nursultan Nazarbaev to stand for election as many times as he likes will strengthen his position, but goes against promises of democratic change, say NBCentralAsia observers.



On May 22, Nazarbaev signed off on a set of constitutional amendments that, among other things, reduce the presidential term from seven to five years but allow him, as Kazakstan’s first president, to serve as many terms as he likes. The changes also grant him the right to initiate legislation independently of government.



Parliament approved the changes on May 18 with little debate.



Other amendments include an increase in the number of seats in the legislature and a change in the election system for the lower house of parliament so that all seats will be based on proportional representation using party lists.



NBCentralAsia political scientist Oleg Sidorov says that allowing Nazarbaev to stand for re-election indefinitely means that democracy will grind to a halt.



Sidorov believes Kazakstan could be about to repeat Turkmenistan’s experience. In that country, the Halk Maslahaty or People’s Congress proposed in 1999 that the then head of state Saparmurat Niazov should be president for life. It was members of Nazarbaev’s Nur Otan party who proposed the constitutional change allowing him to stand as many times as he wants.



Nazarbaev has ruled out standing in the next presidential election, due in 2012. Political scientist Dosym Satpaev believes the constitutional change is an insurance policy to avoid a crisis towards the end of Nazarbaev’s term. It gives him some space to manoeuvre as he tries to manage the transition and decides who is going to succeed him.



“Nazarbaev has time and options, but he has still calculated that he might not be able to decide on a handover mechanism by 2012,“ he said.



Satpaev said all the talk of constitutional reforms to strengthen parliament was a decoy to divert public attention away from the president’s consolidation of his own position.



Kazakstan’s constitutional reform has been sold as a major step towards democracy, but in reality the strengthened parliament will be dominated by a single party, Nur Otan, while stronger elected councils will still be dependent on local government.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)