Kazakhs will go to the polls on Sunday to decide a constitutional referendum that authorities present as a move toward democratisation, even as several proposed changes appear to strengthen the president's hand in Central Asia's wealthiest nation.
The package would revise roughly 80% of Kazakhstan's fundamental law and was advanced by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who frames the reforms as a way to rebalance foreign ties among the European Union, Russia and China and to reshape domestic governance.
After widespread protests over living costs in January 2022 that escalated into riots and left 238 people dead, Tokayev pledged political liberalisation to build a "just Kazakhstan." Announcing the amendments in February, he said the country was "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, has described the proposals as creating "a new system of state governance" that would "allow for the redistribution of power" and "strengthen the checks and balances system."
But several measures in the draft appear to centralise authority. Under the proposed text, the president would gain the power to appoint senior officials including the heads of the central bank, the intelligence services and the constitutional court — posts that currently require Senate approval.
The amendments would abolish the Senate, the upper chamber of parliament, and replace it with a single-chamber assembly called the Kurultai. The draft gives the president the right to dissolve that assembly and to govern by executive order if the legislature refuses to confirm presidential nominees for key posts twice.
The draft also tightens limits on speech. It says expression must not "undermine the morality of society or violate public order," language critics warn could be used to curb dissent and further restrict demonstrations — already rare in Kazakhstan.
The constitutional overhaul was proposed only a month before the vote and followed a brisk two-week campaign that drew little public criticism. Observers note that elections in Kazakhstan are often predictable and tend to endorse decisions made by the leadership, as is common across much of post‑Soviet Central Asia.
To bolster turnout and secure support, authorities have enlisted prominent athletes and mobilised workers in the mining and oil sectors — two pillars of the Kazakh economy. Several critics of the reforms have been summoned by police or briefly detained, and journalists who published independent opinion polls have been fined.
International and domestic rights groups say that while Tokayev presents himself as a reformer breaking with an authoritarian past, democratic institutions remain tightly controlled and the new measures risk concentrating power rather than dispersing it.
