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Theses and quotes: Касым-Жомарт Токаев
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Year: 2022
Document: EUREPORTER: Turning Kazakhstan into a Competitive, Merit-Based Political...
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The first 14 wordings are distributed across themes and document supports.
Document supports
1
Key quotes
6
Theme entries
4
A. State building and political reforms10
C. Digitalization and AI1
E. Rule of law and anti-corruption2
F. Foreign policy and sovereignty1
Source: Qaz.Vision thesis topic annotations Open theses
The old political system had clearly exhausted itself, outlived its usefulness, and was in need of a major overhaul.
In one of the most welcomed announcements, President Tokayev announced the end of “institutionalised nepotism”, whereby close family members of the President can hold high positions in government and state owned enterprises.
The new political system, from the clues we heard today, therefore, will be less based on family contacts and more on merit.
The other important announcement, is the redistribution of presidential powers to the parliament, increasing the responsibility of the legislative branch of state power, while retaining general features of a presidential state.
President Tokayev also aims to increase the independence of the judicial branch by setting up the Constitutional Court to replace the Constitutional Council of Kazakhstan, an institution which all too often has been made susceptible to executive capture.
Kazakhstan is pioneering in this regard in the sense that it starts a process to gradually devolve powers to the Parliament while keeping stability in the country.
While the threshold continues to decline for the formation of new parties, the real litmus test will be whether opposition parties actually get registered.
Instead, regional governors will be elected indirectly. That means the people don’t get to elect them, but local councils do, to which the President must propose at least two candidates.
Less attention during the state of the nation address was paid to economic reforms, which mostly dealt with the negative collateral damage of the current tense international geopolitical environment and in particular the impact of international sanctions on Russia, on the Kazakh economy.
Other structural changes have already been set in motion – green economy, digitalisation, connectivity – and perhaps needed less attention in a speech that was firmly devoted to new radical changes for a new Kazakhstan.
It is therefore remarkable that President Tokayev pledges reviewing the media law and therefore building environment for open, competitive and responsible media, as an ally of the government to carry out further democratic changes and increase feedback mechanisms between citizens and government.
A critical and inquisitive media which does its job free of undue pressure, interference and intimidation is critical.
In the coming months, a plethora of legislation; amendments to the Constitution; and new laws will need to be enacted and put it into practice.
But the scene is set for the new Kazakhstan, and the “new Kazakhstan” is here to stay.