Public Kept Out of Constitutional Debate

The Kazak parliament has approved the first reading of constitutional amendments proposed by President Nursultan Nazarbaev, which if finally passed will change the way the state is governed. NBCentralAsia observers say non-government groups, the media and political parties have been largely left out of the discussion on the reform.



The amendments, which got their first reading on May 16, would change the form of government from a presidential system to a mixed presidential and parliamentary set-up. Parliament would get more power to form governments, the number of seats in the legislature would rise from 116 to 154, and the entire lower house or Majilis would be elected by proportional representation using party lists.



Under the proposed changes, future Kazak presidents would serve five instead of the current seven years in office, and would have to seek parliament’s approval when nominating a prime minister.



Although the proposals throw up few surprises from what was already in the public domain, NBCentralAsia commentators say the public has not been properly consulted.



Ninel Fokina, head of the Almaty Helsinki committee and member of the presidential Human Rights Commission, says there should have been at least a month-long public debate on the issue.



“It is not right that one group of people offer suggestions, then another group adopts them the same day,” she said.



Fokina said some of the progressive changes concerning the extension of parliament’s powers might come to nothing unless Kazakstan’s election legislation is changed at the same time.



“Unless we have a proper electoral system, the number of deputies in parliament is not going to matter. Party lists work in a more developed political system, but it is ridiculous to make parliament electable solely by this means and saythere will be [different party] factions in it, when in fact there is only one strong party,” she said.



Most of the seats in parliament are currently held by the presidential Nur Otan party, which has over 900,000 members. The next parliamentary election is due in 2009.



Jarmakhan Tuyakbay, head of the opposition National Social Democratic Party, wrote an open letter to Nazarbeev at the beginning of May, arguing that the presidential working group that drafted the constitutional amendments was insufficiently “transparent and open to the views of the public”.



However, political scientist Nikolay Kuzmin argues that the working group is responsible only for overseeing the legal technicalities involved in changing the constitution. Members of the public were free to become involved in the process if they wanted.



“Many public and political institutions in Kazakstan have taken part, directly or indirectly, in preparing the constitutional reforms. The extent to which they did that depended on their level of interest.”



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