Kazakhstan President Lays Out Constitutional Reform Plan

Kazakhstan is a little-known country in Central Asia. It, however, has one of the most autocratic regimes in the world. Recent protests in the country have been met with brute force. But in a surprising twist of events, the country’s President has proposed constitutional reforms that will limit his own powers, that is, those of the office he holds and at the same time strengthen the parliament. This information is from Reuters. Here is an excerpt:

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed constitutional reforms to limit the powers of his office, saying Wednesday the country needed to switch from “superpresidential” rule to a presidential republic with a strong parliament.

Tokayev was elected president in 2019 with the backing of his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, who had resigned after running the oil-rich nation for three decades but retained sweeping powers until recently.

Nazarbayev gave up his remaining powers as the head of the security council and the leader of the ruling party during and after violent unrest in early January, and his relatives have since lost a number of influential positions in the government and state companies.

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