The president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, proposed this Thursday the holding of early presidential elections this fall and the reduction to seven years of the mandate of the head of state, non-renewable.
Tokayev, who has been in power in the Central Asian country since 2019 after the resignation of his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, has also proposed holding early parliamentary elections in the first half of 2023.
Addressing the Nur-Sultan parliament, Tokayev said such measures are necessary to “strengthen the structure of the state” and “the course of reforms”, according to the French news agency AFP.
The next presidential elections were scheduled for 2024.
Until now, the mandate is for five years and cannot be renewed more than twice in a row.
In January this year, Kazakhstan was rocked by peaceful protests against rising fuel prices, followed by riots in which more than 230 people were killed.
Russia sent a military contingent to restore order.
This was the most serious political crisis in the former Soviet republic since its independence in 1991.
According to observers quoted by AFP, a power struggle between Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Nursultan Nazarbayev’s clan was at the center of the violence, the causes of which are still unclear.
In June, Tokayev’s proposed constitutional reforms to end the Nazarbayev era were approved in a referendum.
Source: Observadora
