ASTANA – The Kazakh parliament is on Friday expected to order a referendum on extending President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s rule to 2020, defying US criticism of a move that would scrap two planned presidential polls. A joint session of the upper and lower houses is set to agree the referendum after a petition for the plebiscite gathered an astonishing five million signatures — one half of the electorate and one third of the population. Supporters of the plan say it will guarantee the stability of Central Asia’s richest state for the next decade but the opposition and the West have raised concerns it will create an authoritarian and unaccountable regime.
The ruling party Nur Otan — which controls every single seat in the Mazhalis lower house — has urged all political forces in the country to unite to support the plan. “We urge all the forces to join the democratic coalition and show the consolidated support of all civil society and all the Kazakh people to prolong the mandate of the leader of the nation,” it said. The joint session of the Mazhalis and the upper house is due to start at 0400 GMT.
If the referendum is passed — a virtual certainty after the petition — Kazakhstan will skip planned presidential elections in 2012 and 2017, a prospect that has already caused international concern. Earlier this month, the US embassy in Astana took the unusual step of issuing a statement condemning the idea of holding the referendum, saying it “would be a setback for democracy in Kazakhstan”.
The parliament vote comes after the president rejected the proposal this month. But this appears to have been a merely token gesture and by a quirk of the constitution parliament has the power to overturn his veto and can point to the popular support in the petition. Overriding Nazarbayev’s veto would surprise few given the president rejected a bill making him “leader of the nation” (Elbasy in Kazakh) last year but it was then signed into law by the speakers of both parliaments. A coalition of Kazakh NGOs opposing the plan said that the issue of prolonging the president’s mandate could not be tackled in a referendum and it would infringe the rights of those intending to stand in 2012 elections.
