Политическая система Казахстана

Political system

Kazakhstan is officially a presidential republic. The first and only president is Nursultan Nazarbayev. The president is also the commander in chief of the armed forces and may veto legislation that has been passed by the Parliament. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Ministers and serves as Kazakhstan's head of government. There are three deputy prime ministers and 16 ministers in the Cabinet. Karim Massimov has served as the Prime Minister since January 10, 2007.

Kazakhstan has a bicameral Parliament composed of the lower house (the Majilis) and upper house (the Senate). Single mandate districts popularly elect 107 seats in the Majilis; there also are 10 members elected by party-list vote rather than by single mandate districts. The Senate has 47 members. Two senators are selected by each of the elected assemblies (Maslikhats) of Kazakhstan's 16 principal administrative divisions (14 provinces, plus the cities of Astana and Almaty). The president appoints the remaining 7 senators. Majilis deputies and the government both have the right of legislative initiative, though the government proposes most legislation considered by the Parliament. Political system

The head of the state is the President.The supreme body of the authority is two-chamber Parliament that consists of the Senate and the Mazhilis. Kazakhstan — the constitutional parliamentary-presidential republic. The president is the head of the state and chief supreme commander.

Executive authority.The President of Republic Kazakhstan is voted by full age citizens of Kazakhstan on general, equal, direct and secret vote basis. The President of Republic Kazakhstan is Nursultan Nazarbaev. The Presidents terms of limit are 5 years.

    The executive authority is carried out by the government. The system of the executive branch of the government consists of the ministries, services and agencies. The head of the government — the prime minister Karim Masimov.

Legislative power.Legislature is brought into action the Parliament that consists of two Chambers: the Senate and the Mazhilis working on a regular basis.

    The Senate is formed by the deputies represented in order of constitution law for two person out of each region, city of republican value and capital of the Republic of Kazakhstan (14 regions, 2 cities). Fifteen deputies of the Senate are appointed by the President in order to fulfill the representation for the Senate of national-cultural and other significant interests of a society.

    The Mazhilis consists of the 107 deputies selected by the constitutional law. Terms of limit of deputies in Senate are six years, for deputies of Mazhilis – five years.

The Judicial Branch

   Judicial system is a set of all courts of Kazakhstan.

The judicial system includes the Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the local courts established according to the Constitution of RK and the Constitutional law.

To local courts concern:

Oblast (regional) courts and equal to them (city courts of cities of republican value and capital, specialized court —  Military court of Republic Kazakhstan, specialized financial courts, etc.);

District (rayon) courts and equal to them courts (city, interdistrict, specialized court -military court of garrison and others).

In the Republic of Kazakhstan specialized courts (military, financial, economic, administrative, juvenale, etc.) can be created. The set of mentioned RK’s courts is connected by the unity of issue on distribution of justice and functional form of acting

Elections

Elections to the Majilis in September 2004 yielded a lower house dominated by the pro-government Otan Party, headed by President Nazarbayev. Two other parties considered sympathetic to the president, including the agrarian-industrial bloc AIST and the Asar Party, founded by President Nazarbayev's daughter, won most of the remaining seats. Opposition parties, which were officially registered and competed in the elections, won a single seat during elections that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said fell short of international standards.

In 1999, Kazakhstan applied for observer status at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. The official response of the Assembly was that Kazakhstan could apply for full membership, because it is partially located in Europe, but that they would not be granted any status whatsoever at the Council until their democracy and human rights records improved.

On December 4, 2005, Nursultan Nazarbayev was reelected in a landslide victory. The electoral commission announced that he had won over 90% of the vote. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) concluded the election did not meet international standards despite some improvements in the administration of the election. Xinhua News Agency reported that observers from China, responsible in overseeing 25 polling stations in Astana, found that voting in those polls was conducted in a "transparent and fair" manner.

On August 17, 2007, elections to the lower house of parliament were held and a coalition led by the ruling Nur-Otan Party, which included Asar Party, Civil Party of Kazakhstan and Agrarian Party, won every seat with 88% of the vote. None of the opposition parties have reached the benchmark 7% level of the seats. This has led some in the local media to question the competence and charisma of the opposition party leaders. Opposition parties made accusations of serious irregularities in the election.

On April 3, 2011, in presidential elections Nursultan Nazarbayev was reelected to a five-year term as Kazakhstan’s President. In 2010 President Nazarbayev rejected a call from constituents to hold a referendum to keep him in office until 2020 and, instead, insisted on an election to be held in April 2011. President Nazarbayev received 95.54 percent of the vote with 89.9 percent of registered voters participating. Many observers lauded the substantial progress toward Kazakhstan’s democracy.[citation needed] Nazarbayev outlined the progress Kazakhstan has experienced in an OP-ED in the Washington Post in March 2011. However Kazakhstan was reported on the Economist's Democracy Index for 2010, as an authoritarian regime.

Foreign relations

Kazakhstan has stable relationships with all of its neighbors. Kazakhstan is also a member of the United Nations, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). It is an active participant in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Partnership for Peace program

On April 11, 2010, Presidents Nazarbayev and Obama met at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., and discussed strengthening the strategic partnership between the United States and Kazakhstan and pledged to intensify bilateral cooperation to promote nuclear safety and non-proliferation, regional stability in Central Asia, economic prosperity, and universal values.

In April 2011, President Obama called President Nazarbayev and discussed many cooperative efforts regarding nuclear security, including securing nuclear material from the BN-350 reactor, and reviewed progress on meeting goals that the two presidents established during their bilateral meeting at the Nuclear Security Summit in 2010. President Obama also thanked President Nazarbayev for his support to foster security and prosperity in Afghanistan. In a letter to President Nazarbayev dated August 16, 2011, President Obama praised Kazakhstan as “a longtime world leader in nuclear security,”

Kazakhstan is also a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Economic Cooperation Organization and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The nations of Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan established the Eurasian Economic Community in 2000 to re-energize earlier efforts at harmonizing trade tariffs and the creation of a free trade zone under a customs union. On December 1, 2007, it was revealed that Kazakhstan had been chosen to chair OSCE for the year 2010.

Since independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has pursued what is known as the "multivector foreign policy" (Kazakh: көпвекторлы сыртқы саясат; mnogovektornaya vneshnyaya politika), seeking equally good relations with two large neighbors, Russia and China, and the United States and the West in general.[25][26] The policy has yielded results in the oil and gas sector, where companies from the U.S., Russia, China, and Europe are present at all major fields, and in the multidimensional directions of oil export pipelines out of Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan also enjoys strong, and rapidly developing, political and economic ties with Turkey. Kazakhstan formed a customs union with Russia and Belarus which will be transformed into a common economic space soon.[citation needed]

Russia currently leases approximately 6,000 km²  (2,300 mi²) of territory enclosing the Baikonur Cosmodrome space launch site in south central Kazakhstan, where the first man was launched into space as well as Soviet space shuttle Buran and the well-known space station Mir.

Military

Kazakhstani Republican Guard

Most of Kazakhstan's military was inherited from the Soviet Armed Forces' Turkestan Military District. These units became the core of Kazakhstan's new military which acquired all the units of the 40th Army (the former 32nd Army) and part of the 17th Army Corps, including 6 land force divisions, storage bases, the 14th and 35th air-landing brigades, 2 rocket brigades, 2 artillery regiments and a large amount of equipment which had been withdrawn from over the Urals after the signing of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. The largest expansion of the Kazakhstan Army has been focused on armored units in recent years. Since 1990, armored units have expanded from 500 to 1,613 in 2005.

The Kazakh air force is composed mostly of Soviet-era planes, including 41 MiG-29s, 44 MiG-31s, 37 Su-24s and 60 Su-27s. A small naval force is also maintained on the Caspian Sea.

Kazakhstan sent 49 military engineers to Iraq to assist the US post-invasion mission in Iraq.

Kazakhstan's National Security Committee (KNB) was established on June 13, 1992. It includes the Service of Internal Security, Military Counterintelligence, Border Guard, several Commando units, and Foreign Intelligence (Barlau). The latter is considered as the most important part of KNB. Its director is Nurtai Abykayev.

August 2011 marked the ninth year of the joint tactical-peacekeeping exercise "Steppe Eagle" hosted by the Kazakhstan government. Steppe Eagle focuses on building coalitions and gives participating nations the opportunity to work together.