On Aug. 23, Kazakhstan elected its parliament for the first time under its new constitution. However, the most important thing about this election is not who won, but the candidates whom Kazakh citizens were not allowed to choose — not a single independent candidate and not a single party opposed President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. International observers have concluded that the elimination of independent candidacies reduced political choice and that all parties contesting the election supported the incumbent president’s policies.
The new constitution was sold as a modernization of the state, but this first election revealed its real purpose — not to open the political system, but to make the rule of Kazakhstan’s current elite more legally convenient and more durable.
The broader story is not uniquely Kazakh. Tokayev is following the well-worn path of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Uzbekistan, and other post-Soviet regimes in which constitutional changes that appear to impose or preserve term limits actually reset the clock for the incumbent. Russia’s 2020 amendments nullified Putin’s previous presidential terms, and Uzbekistan’s 2023 constitutional overhaul both lengthened the presidential term and reset Mirziyoyev’s count. Comparable devices have appeared elsewhere in Central Asia as well.
The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) delivered its diagnosis with remarkably little diplomatic camouflage: Kazakhstan’s election took place in an environment “lacking political pluralism.” The newly created, pro-presidential Adilet party won 71.17% of the vote, according to final results from the Central Election Commission. Four other parties crossed the 5% threshold, but they, too, broadly support Tokayev’s government.
This is no accident. It is what the new rules were designed to do.
In 2019, after three decades of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s rule, Tokayev came to power speaking the language of cautious liberalization and promising a “Listening State.” In 2022, “bloody January” showed how little those words meant when the regime felt threatened. Now, instead of another promise of reform, Kazakhstan has a new constitution, and the parliamentary election was the first stress test of whom that constitution is actually designed to serve. The political rupture produced by the violent unrest of January 2022 became central to Tokayev’s effort to distinguish his presidency from the Nazarbayev era.
The design of the Kurultai, Kazakhstan’s new legislative body, shows how the reform limits voters’ choices. The new, 145-seat unicameral parliament is elected exclusively through closed party lists in a single nationwide constituency; independent candidates have been eliminated. ODIHR has explicitly stated that the exclusion of those candidates runs contrary to international standards and its previous recommendations.
The president, meanwhile, has received expanded appointment powers and can dissolve the Kurultai if it repeatedly rejects his nominees, including his candidate for speaker. When parliament is absent, the president can temporarily issue acts carrying the force of law.
Kazakhstan’s new constitution also created the 126-member Halyq Kenesi, a presidentially appointed body with legislative powers, and restored the office of vice president, who is appointed (and removable) by the president with the consent of the Kurultai. This is not a system of checks and balances. It is a system in which the president gains additional entrances into the legislative branch while voters have fewer.
The constitutional reform was carried out much like the election — quickly and from above. ODIHR has noted that key legislation implementing the new constitution was rushed through parliament with limited transparency and public consultation, while most of previous ODIHR recommendations remain unaddressed. Vaguely worded 2026 restrictions on foreign funding for election-related activities have created obstacles even for citizen observers.
Perhaps the best symbol of the entire arrangement is Adilet itself. The party was registered on June 1. Its leader, Aibek Dadebay, had headed the Presidential Administration only a month earlier, and some of its members took part in drafting the new constitution. Adilet then absorbed the former ruling party, Amanat. ODIHR reported credible indications that administrative resources were being misused, and concluded that Adilet’s advantage blurred the line between party and state.
Even the vote count offers little reassurance. International observers documented discrepancies between observed voting activity and officially reported turnout, as well as significant procedural violations during vote counting. More than one-third of observed counts were assessed negatively because of procedural violations and omissions, raising serious doubts about whether ballots were counted and recorded honestly.
These are not allegations from the Kazakh opposition. They are the findings of the joint international observation mission of ODIHR, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
However, the most important constitutional trick is hidden not in parliament, but in the presidency. Article 43 of the new constitution looks almost exemplary: The president is elected for a single seven-year term and cannot be re-elected. For a Western diplomat, that makes for a perfect headline about presidential self-restraint. For a post-Soviet autocrat, it is merely a technical problem.
On July 7, only six days after the new constitution entered into force, Kazakhstan’s Constitutional Court — acting on a request from the president — ruled that presidential terms served under the 1995 constitution would not count under the new term limit. In other words, an election held after July 1, 2026, would be considered the first election under the new constitutional order. At Tokayev’s request, the Constitutional Court issued a ruling that opened a legal path to run again after his current term expires. On the day of the parliamentary election, he reminded journalists that he has the right to seek re-election under the law.
We have seen this movie before. In Russia, the 2020 constitutional reform and a Constitutional Court ruling reset Putin’s previous presidential terms, opening the door to further terms in office. In Uzbekistan, the 2023 constitutional referendum reset Mirziyoyev’s term count while extending the presidential term from five to seven years. A few months later, he was re-elected.
The pattern goes back further. In Kyrgyzstan, a 1998 Constitutional Court ruling held that Askar Akayev’s term before the 1993 constitution did not count under the new limit, allowing him to run again in 2000. Kazakhstan used a similar maneuver under Nazarbayev: In 2000, the Constitutional Council ruled that his earlier term should not count toward the constitutional limit. Tajikistan chose a blunter route in 2016, amending its constitution to exempt Emomali Rahmon, as “Leader of the Nation,” from presidential term limits.
Calling them authoritarian copycats may be too neat. Through mechanisms such as constitutional manipulation, assigning themselves special titles like “Father” or “Leader of the Nation,” and creating unelected supreme legislative bodies, Central Asian dictators seek the same goal: Usurp power and never step down. We can call this what it is — a regional pattern of different legal devices with the same political result. Research on Central Asia finds evidence of authoritarian diffusion, mimicry, and legal harmonization across the region and the wider post-Soviet space, while cautioning that evidence about direct external influence is often limited.
Kazakhstan’s version is arguably even more elegant: The constitution says “one term,” and the court explains why the current one does not count. The formula is simple: One term, just not this one.
In January 2024, Tokayev insisted that the rule allowing a president to be elected only once would never change. He has not yet formally announced whether he will run in the next presidential election. But the legal path now open to him undermines the credibility of that assurance.
It is time for the West to stop judging Kazakhstan in isolation, or by the names of its institutions and press releases about a “Just Kazakhstan.” Democratization is not measured by how many constitutional articles are rewritten. It is measured by whether citizens can freely choose, and replace, those who rule them.
When independent candidates are removed from the ballot and opposition movements cannot register political parties, when the state and the dominant party blur into one, when independent journalists operate under pressure, and when presidential term limits are reset through constitutional interpretation, this is not liberalization. ODIHR’s assessment of Kazakhstan’s August election documented the lack of political alternatives, the exclusion of independent candidates, and the blurring of the state-party boundary. The Constitutional Court’s July ruling supplied the presidential-term reset.
Kazakhstan changed its constitution. It did not change its system. Like several of its neighbors, it simply made that system more convenient for one man.
