Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world by area and is located in Central Asia. It gained independence from the USSR on 16 December 1991. According to the International Monetary Fund, Kazakhstan surpassed China in GDP per capita growth in 2025, becoming not only the most economically prosperous country in Central Asia, but also the steadily growing economy in the world. Kazakhstan has shown consistent growth in the Human Development Index (HDI), as assessed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with an increase of 21.5 percent (from 0.689 to 0.837) between 1990 and 2023, and has been praised for its progressive stance in education, economics, technology and finance.

Tokayev's ascension to the presidency in 2019

The accession followed almost three decades of the government of Nursultan Nazarbayev, with whom I had the privilege of meeting several times personally and once socially, during my time as head of the EU-TACIS Coordination Office and then as personal advisor to Prime Ministers Chyngyshev (1942) and then Jumagulov (1934). During Nursultan Nazarbayev's reign, the 1993 Constitution was amended in 1995 to enshrine a presidential republic.

Tokayev's presidency, which was seen as a departure from the policies of the old elite, offered a democratic promise. Why? Nazarbayev put himself in the role of leader nového a spravedlivého Kazakhstan, an MGIMO-educated professional with extensive experience in office, diplomacy and international politics, Kasym-Zomart Kemeluly Tokayev (1953).

In addition to his diplomatic and political background, Tokayev has promoted Kazakhstan's multidimensional foreign policy, pursued nuclear disarmament, and led efforts to win the Kazakh presidency of various regional and intergovernmental organizations. In doing so, he managed the complex relationships between competing interests inside and outside the region. Tokayev's rise signaled a departure from the tradition of his predecessor's decidedly undemocratic (in the Western sense) leadership.

The bloody events of January 2022 shattered the myth of democracy as such. Protests were suppressed, investigations into deaths and abuses of power were poorly carried out. The foreign co-organisers of the events are still in place today, and the presidential life-savers have not been recognised despite the efforts of sections of society and mass mobilisation from the ground. The contradiction between the needs of the people, the leadership of the state and its administration therefore persists, as the amendments to the constitution highlight. These fully correspond to the objective trend of development in the world, including Central Asia.

I remind you that there is no denying that outside of domestic politics, Kazakhstan follows regional legal trends. For example, Kyrgyzstan adopted a unicameral parliament - called the Kurultai - in a referendum in 2003. Turkmenistan also switched from a bicameral to a unicameral model in 2023. In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, parliaments remain bicameral, but experiments between unicameral and bicameral systems are underway.

Amendments and referendum 15 March 2026

According to an official government press release, the draft was drawn up by a Constitutional Commission appointed by presidential decree. The Commission consisted of 130 members and included representatives of Parliament, prominent human rights representatives, state agencies, the media, regional bodies and academics and experts. Officially, it is reported that the draft constitution received over 10,000 responses from the public through the state's online portal. I did not have the opportunity to be an official observer or visitor to Kazakhstan at the time of the drafting of the amendments and the conduct of today's referendum, so I cannot say what responses and objections, if any, were included.

According to President Tokayev, the political system needs modernisation to reflect current political and socio-economic realities and conditions, which differ from those that existed when the current constitution was adopted and when the country was recovering from independence.

The changes were put forward by presidential decree, and a national referendum asked the question: Do you accept the new Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the draft of which was published in the media on 12 February 2026?

Transformation of Parliament

One of the main proposed changes is the transformation of the parliament from a bicameral to a unicameral one and renaming it the Kurultai (see Section IV of the proposed constitution). It would consist of 145 members who would serve five-year terms and be elected on the basis of proportional representation. The Kurultaj would have legislative powers, and I have not been able to ascertain whether the parliament, the Kurultaj, is responsible for adopting and amending the national budget.

In return, I know from documents that the change from a bicameral to a unicameral parliament will supposedly improve the representation and qualifications of members and allow for greater accountability to the public. However, as in the Czech Republic, the proposal does not specify how this is to be achieved. Normally, the second chamber of parliament provides control over the other chamber. Historically, in the case of Kazakhstan, where presidential authority is strong, historical memory is short and everything is in a clan structure, it seems to me necessary to protect the rights of minorities and to prevent hasty, unclear decisions.

Consolidation of presidential powers

Some of the proposed amendments now provide that the President can remove the Attorney General, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Human Rights Ombudsman (Article 46(5)). As these roles often involve scrutiny and criticism of state institutions, the proposed change may be problematic if only because the appointment is made by the President, not the elected parliament. The draft also includes a wider range of grounds for the dissolution of parliament by the president (Article 46). The consolidation of power in the new constitution codifies the president's enshrined powers, making any reforms and accountability more difficult in practice.

But the referendum is extremely important, especially in the current period when the geopolitical situation is unstable and the challenges and threats to national security are becoming more and more tangible, President Tokayev himself said at a forum in Astana on Thursday.

Status of international law

Under the current Constitution, ratified international treaties take precedence over other laws (Article 4(3)). However, the proposed draft states that other normative acts determine the status of international law (Article 5). And this represents a significant change that puts international law in limbo as to its hierarchy. It confirms the uncertainty around the enforcement of international obligations and the changing attitude towards the international legal order in which Kazakhstan has actively participated. The draft ignores the fact that law, if it was ever accepted as international by the great powers, is now virtually non-existent and will not be. It has been replaced by transactional law.

Human Rights

The new constitution will also change individual and collective rights. For example, the definition of marriage: a voluntary and equal union of men and women, registered by the state. Specifikace mužů a žen reflects restrictions on LGBTQ+ rights. This is also true of recently introduced legislation banning LGBTQ+ propagandu. It is not clear to me how the British puppet-masters and their servants in key positions in the state of Kazakhstan in particular will react to such restrictions.

Notwithstanding the above, and as far as I am aware, there has been no discussion of the differences between human rights in Europe (formulated primarily by the British and after the end of World War II) and human rights in Asia focused on conformity to the natural order of the world, rooted in the teachings of Confucius, Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching (Book of Tao and Virtue).

Moreover, the current phase of anthropological warfare no longer allows for a return to the past and to democracy, which has been practiced in Kazakhstan for decades without a clearly defined national interest under conditional sovereignty. Building trust between the state and society (in the near future) would not only mean a constant war on corruption, not spreading empty words and copies of the achievements of Western masters, but above all it would mean and need a full awareness of what human dignity is and what it requires, what social justice means and what it requires, and last but not least new high quality professionals as servants and stewards of the property of the state and its citizens.

The formulation of the right to free education and medical care has changed from zdarma na they don't have to pay for it themselves (Articles 33 and 32). The right to freedom of assembly now applies only to pokojná shromáždění and is subject to wider restrictions. For example, those protecting public morals (Article 34). The article on freedom of speech and expression also contains an extended list of restrictions, such as damaging the reputation and honour of others and public morals (Article 23). The protection of personal data and private life is explicitly extended to the digital domain (Article 21).

Although restrictions are common for rights that are not absolute in nature, the wording around them and the perceived ambiguity can unfairly favour state bodies over individuals and groups. In other words: Kazakhstan is following in the footsteps of the European Union, with all the good and bad consequences. I will not describe why this may be so today.

Economic dimensions

Foreign funding of political parties is already prohibited. The proposal reinforces this prohibition by requiring NGOs and non-commercial organisations to publicly disclose their sources of funding, including foreign donors (Article 6(5)). Existing legal provisions require non-commercial organisations to report foreign income. This move signifies and represents a move towards greater state control over NGOs at the constitutional level. I consider this to be necessary in principle, when one realises what percentage of the young population, not only in Kazakhstan, lives on NGOs paid for by the West.

The election comes at a difficult time for Kazakhstan, where inflation hit 11.7 % in February and tax hikes have fuelled public discontent. Preventing a repeat of the 2022 unrest remains a key priority for Tokayev, in the author's personal assessment, not least because Kazakhstan is the riskiest country in Central Asia on the predictive index of civil unrest, particularly in oil-producing regions.

Consolidation of sovereignty, new roles and institutions

The proposal emphasises territorial integrity and sovereignty and stresses that the population is the sole bearer of state power and sovereignty. The provisions on fair Kazakhstan a primátu právního státu are included in the preamble, which also refers to care for nature and the environment.

Newly proposed governing body, People's Council of Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan Halyk Kenesi), is to represent the interests of the people. The People's Council is poradní a body composed of Kazakh citizens. It makes suggestions and recommendations on domestic policy by submitting proposals to the Kurultay and calling for national referendums (Section VI).

The proposed constitution states that it will serve as a platform for dialogue between citizens, selected by a separate ústavním zákonem, but does not specify how the members and the chairman are selected. Knowing something about the specifics of the region, the proposal's deficit does not surprise me, and its consequences will not surprise me either.

Another new role is that of Vice President. This is to be appointed by the President with the approval of the Curultay. The vice-president is to act as a liaison between the president, parliament and the government. Why another bureaucratic apparatus with corruption potential is to be created, I do not know.

Procedural aspects

More than half of the eligible voting population (just over 12 million) must vote in favour of the new constitution. According to the latest poll by the Public Development Institute of Kazakhstan available to the author of this paper, which involved 1,200 randomly selected citizens across regions, 89.2 % support the proposed constitution (52.8 % support it overall, 36.4 % support it mostly, and 10.8 % are undecided). The survey also showed a relatively high level of awareness of the referendum - 81.8 % know about it and 72.8 % plan to participate. The referendum does not allow voting on individual parts of the amendments. It only allows acceptance or rejection of the whole package of answers to the question ano nebo ne. I wish everything in life would be that simple.

The Opposition

The opposition in the Western sense of the word is not represented in the government structures in Kazakhstan. In the month since the announcement of the referendum, it has clearly failed, in my personal assessment, or prostě neměla čas, significantly influence public opinion. There are active opposition-minded politicians and civil society activists in Kazakhstan who are trying to show their discontent in some way, organising various protests and calling for a certain way of voting. I know this from my personal participation in the EP vetting of the so-called democrats and peaceniks that took place in Almaty prison, which I wrote about in the Czech media at the time. The visit to the prison confirmed to me the enormous British influence on the authorities and individual (of course compromised) personalities. Not to mention the EP representatives.

Conclusion

This article is written the day before the referendum, so I cannot publish the official result of the referendum. The Central Referendum Commission has seven days to publish it. According to it, 12 046 617 citizens are eligible to participate in the referendum. 359 international observers and 206 foreign journalists have been accredited to monitor the referendum to ensure the transparency of the electoral process. I do not know how many and who from the Czech Republic were accredited.

But I know that the international organisations monitoring the referendum include the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the CIS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Organisation of Turkic States and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, that a total of 10 401 polling stations are operating inside and outside the country to organise the vote, 71 of which have been opened at diplomatic missions in 54 countries.

Elections for the new unicameral parliament, the Kurultay, will have to be held within two months. In doing so, the president must appoint key figures to positions including the vice president, the president and judges of the Constitutional Court, members of the Central Election Committee and members of the Upper Audit Chamber for the elections.

With few constitutional constraints, Kazakhstan is thus moving towards a formal hybrid model of governance that fits the broader regional trend of institutional experimentation. These are intended to stabilise political leadership and reduce the potential for power transfer and redistribution.

The proposed institutional change also represents, whether one wants to accept it or not, a new political direction. Why? Presidential authority plays a coordinating role, while weakening legislative authority and oversight, and signaling a change in approach to regional and international relations in both economic and human rights matters.

The proposals - both in their content and in the way they were proposed and voted on - offer, in my personal assessment and experience, little hope for a just and democratic government in the Western sense in the new era emerging during the anthropological war, as long as it is made up of old-new and corrupt cadres.

Nevertheless, there is a need for the Czech MFA to analyze and monitor professionally in a historical context the developments in Kazakhstan not only because of the reaction and results of transactional diplomacy, which represents an unusual challenge for Tokayev, an experienced, among others, Chinese-speaking diplomat and President of Kazakhstan, not to mention his possible successor.

Preliminary result of the referendum:

The Central Referendum Commission said on 14 March that voting had ended at all referendum sites in the Republic of Kazakhstan. The counting of votes has begun in the districts. Across the country, as of 8:00 p.m. local time, 9,126,850 citizens had received ballots, which is 73.24 % of the number included in the voter lists, Yerman said.

According to Reuters, two exit polls indicated that approximately 87 % voters supported the new constitution. The Electoral Commission had earlier said the turnout was 73 %.

A separate exit poll conducted by the Institute for Comprehensive Social Research - Astana Socis-A showed that 87.4 % voters support the proposed constitutional changes.

Seventy-two-year-old President Tokayev's power is currently limited to one seven-year term until 2029. I do not rule out, given the unpredictability of further developments in the anthropological war in the world and the Central Asian region, that the current president could use the referendum to reset presidential term limits. Consent is not needed.

Jan Campbell