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Тоқаев парламенті: әлеуметтік риторикадан консерватив іс-әрекетке көшу

Kazakhstan’s outgoing eighth parliament presented itself as socially engaged and reform-minded, but critics argue it remained bound by presidential ideology, increasingly conservative politics, and informal limits on dissent that a future unicameral assembly is unlikely to escape.

Vlast · By Назерке Курмангазинова · 7 July 2026 · read the original in KK →

On June 30, Kazakhstan’s eighth convocation of its bicameral parliament completed its work. Experts interviewed by Vlast say the agenda of this convocation was highly conservative. Over three years, deputies approved several controversial initiatives, among them measures on catching and destroying stray dogs and enshrining norms protecting “traditional values” in the Constitution.

Deputies say they focused on social issues, including reducing inequality between regions, housing guarantees, palliative care for children, and protecting entrepreneurs. Political scientists disagree. In their view, the deputies have been following a presidential ideology that is moving year by year in a more conservative direction.

Experts do not believe much will change even after the shift to a unicameral Quryltai. Parliament, they say, will remain an institution that works only within the boundaries set by the president and whose purpose is to ensure the stability of power.

General ImpressionЖалпы әсер

According to political scientist Madi Omarov, the eighth convocation was new in outward form, but unchanged in inner substance. He noted that six parties entered parliament for the first time, including the formerly opposition-minded OSDP, and that former deputies returned by running as self-nominated candidates.

“As for the quality and substance of the work, there is no difference from previous convocations,” Omarov says.

Political scientist Dimash Alzhanov said that in Kazakhstan, parliament is not the only lawmaking body, and therefore cannot counterbalance the power of the president and the government. According to him, parliament operates within a system of parties controlled by the presidential administration, and those parties have no connection with society.

Deputies, however, argue that legislative work proceeded at a very rapid pace and assess their work as having prioritized social issues.

Pavel Kazantsev, a former member of the Amanat faction, says the main distinguishing feature of this convocation was that 30 percent of deputies were elected from single-mandate districts. In his view, this forced the ruling party, both informationally and substantively, to “increase the pace of its work” and put forward more legislative initiatives.

Kazantsev noted with pride that roughly 30 percent of the bills considered were proposed by deputies, with digitalization and artificial intelligence among the central areas of attention. He also argued that the Amanat faction “worked with full commitment” during referendums and major reforms.

Irina Smirnova, a deputy elected from the People’s Party of Kazakhstan, considers her faction’s chief achievements to be improving the housing code and preserving standards for pediatric palliative care.

“We want to show that housing is not merely a commodity to be bought and sold, but a basic human need. The state must do everything it can to ensure that every citizen has a home. Orphans, people with disabilities, and other socially vulnerable groups should receive housing free of charge,” she says. Smirnova said the People’s Party worked to pass norms banning eviction without a court decision and requiring support for people in need.

Smirnova also spoke about initiatives to regulate the minimum wage and ratify international agreements. In her words, these changes should ensure that average and median wage figures are not plucked “out of thin air,” but correspond to people’s real cost of living.

According to Daniya Espaeva, a deputy from the Ak Zhol faction, the faction concentrated mainly on the practical protection of business. The former deputy named among its main achievements the prosecution of 19 employees of the state revenue authorities, the suspension of claims seeking to invalidate concluded transactions, and a campaign to reduce the retail tax rate.

Espaeva separately discussed the case of 15 entrepreneurs who faced extortion at Kaztemirtrans. “After the faction intervened, the court held the real corrupt actors accountable. The entrepreneurs were released from criminal liability,” she says.

Espaeva also said that the Prosecutor General’s Office supported their initiatives to reduce pressure on business. She also pointed to the reform transferring state IT projects to the QazTech platform and the legal regulation of digital assets and crypto banks.

According to self-nominated deputy Ermurat Bapi, the appearance in parliament of a real opposition representative for the first time in many years was this convocation’s main achievement.

He considers the chief results of his own work to be his contribution to the law on returning illegally withdrawn capital to the state and his participation in drafting five separate codes.

Still, the deputy did not conceal the disappointments of this period. For example, deputies were unable to stop the time-zone change. The initiative for that reform had been handed over to the government. In addition, deputies “were unable to protect freedom of speech at the proper level.” But Bapi believes society and the media are also to blame for this, because they are not prepared to work “within the framework of law and order.”

Askhat Rakhymzhanov, leader of the OSDP faction, cited the party’s first experience in parliament and assessed his party’s work as “only positive.” Rakhymzhanov noted that over three years the OSDP often raised issues concerning household subsidiary plots and shared land, budget execution, and social inequality.

At the same time, Rakhymzhanov said that all amendments and deputy inquiries were based on real problems. In his words, these initiatives ran up against the budget deficit and conceptual constraints, such as those around land. “Not a single bill we proposed received support from the government. That cannot be called a good result,” he says.

The Limit of DissentҚарсылық шегі

In Dimash Alzhanov’s view, after Bloody January the authorities needed to keep public opinion in their grip. People had long been dissatisfied that there was neither criticism nor change in parliament. The authorities wanted to create the appearance that precisely these gaps had been filled.

“The authorities drew figures such as Bakhytzhan Bazarbek and Ermurat Bapi to their side and gave them freedom to criticize the government. Although they discussed important issues in domestic politics, the main criticism was directed at ministries and akims. That is because the chief function of these officials was to accept blame for failed decisions and deflect the blow away from the president and his circle,” the political scientist explained.

According to Madi Omarov, the presidential administration and other power structures cannot fully monitor every word deputies say. Even so, they have marked out informal red lines that deputies may not cross openly.

Asked why the OSDP, while criticizing budget execution and saying that “the people are growing poorer,” supported parliamentary reform and a new Constitution, Askhat Rakhymzhanov replied that a unicameral parliament had long been an objective in the party’s program.

“Since 2013, we have been saying that parliament should be unicameral. An upper chamber, or any bicameral system, hinders the fast and high-quality adoption of decisions. <...> [Thanks to this reform], parliament’s role as a legislative body will be strengthened,” he said.

We asked Ermurat Bapi why he had initially opposed the new Constitution’s abandonment of the system of self-nominated candidates, and then fallen silent. According to the deputy, after consulting with “people who make political decisions,” he became convinced that under current conditions the single-mandate system “creates risks of separatism and clan lobbying.”

“[Deputies elected from single-mandate districts] can be drawn over by interest groups. It would not be surprising if they turned into active lobbyists for particular groups,” he says. Bapi proposed another compromise: let a region nominate a candidate, but let all of Kazakhstan vote for that candidate. The idea, however, was not supported.

Asked why the People’s Party, while presenting itself as a socially oriented organization, initiated laws on “foreign agents” and a “ban on LGBT propaganda,” Irina Smirnova replied that social issues still remain the core of the faction’s work. As an example, she again cited initiatives to raise the minimum wage and ratify the relevant international agreements.

Smirnova says there is nothing wrong with the law on “foreign agents.” In her view, it is needed to increase transparency around grants. “No one is banning them from working; they simply have to show openly what they are doing.” In her opinion, the law banning LGBT propaganda also does not restrict people’s right to define who they are; it merely limits excessive advertising of the topic and its imposition on society: “For God’s sake, live with whomever you want. But there is no need to make propaganda of it.”

After the January events, the Amanat party fell into crisis, and it had to be merged with the Adilet party, created in May. Answering a question about this, Pavel Kazantsev said there was no “hidden subtext” to the decision. In his view, the main problem is that the ruling party had been working only with its former momentum. Its “large-scale infrastructure and systemic projects” had rendered it inert: it was like “a locomotive pulling ahead while the cars behind it begin to sway.”

Kazantsev linked the merger of the parties to the logic of the new Constitution and the need to bring “fresh blood” into the system. “We needed a new driving force,” Kazantsev said, comparing Adilet to a new mechanism with “no flat tire” and “no broken engine.” According to him, this structure will rely on the technological base of the former ruling party and continue down the road.

The Ak Zhol party often criticizes the budget and the improper spending of National Fund money, which deepens inequality in the regions. Yet the party has consistently approved budgets with precisely such shortcomings, along with the others. According to Daniya Espaeva, the problems all begin at the stage of budget execution.

“If money is constantly being shifted left and right throughout the year, and project deadlines and requirements change frequently, this shows weakness both in budget planning and in its implementation,” she says. “I see the way out of this dead end in improving the quality of planning. Instead of thinking only about absorbing funds, we need to strengthen budget discipline and the personal responsibility of ministers, akims, and program managers for achieving final results.”

Will Parliament Change After the Election?

Madi Omarov believes the deputies of the eighth convocation pursued a far more conservative and reactionary policy than their predecessors. Among the most controversial decisions, he lists the time-zone change, the ban on “LGBT propaganda,” the bill on “foreign agents” currently under discussion, and the enshrining of traditional relationships in the Constitution.

Omarov connects this with the authorities’ attempt to curry favor with the conservative segment of society: “For that purpose, the authorities manufacture an internal enemy inside the country and, if necessary, direct all of the people’s anger toward it. They also seek to keep civil society under control. Conservatism fits very well with undemocratic methods. Authoritarian regimes can justify any action under the pretext of defending traditional values, public morality, and order.”

According to the political scientist’s forecast, the future unicameral parliament is unlikely to deviate from the president’s current ideological line. He says the newly created pro-presidential Adilet party will dominate the Quryltai, and that the conservative course will be maintained. At the same time, he believes the authorities will try not to repeat the mistakes of overly radical right-wing regimes.

In Dimash Alzhanov’s view, after the constitutional changes, parliament’s significance within the system of state governance will decline. That is because some of its functions are to be transferred to the new People’s Council, which will be created by the president.

The political scientist drew attention to the tightening control over deputies’ public statements, the checking of their activity on social networks, and the expectation that the next convocation will be “more disciplined.”

“Kazakhstan is moving toward a system in which deputies must speak and act only within prescribed limits,” he says.

Askhat Rakhymzhanov expects parliamentary reform to make its work more open and bring decision-making mechanisms “closer to the people.” “The procedures for expressing the people’s interests and adopting laws should be clear and swift,” he noted. At the same time, the deputy argued that parliament’s budget oversight function will not disappear, since it will still consider draft constitutional laws regulating the adoption of the budget.

Ermurat Bapi sees advantages in abandoning the Senate. “A unicameral parliament works much more briskly,” he says. The deputy emphasized that the present moment requires laws, including international agreements, to be adopted quickly. In his view, society had long since begun to see the upper chamber as “excess baggage.”

Irina Smirnova hopes the new parliament will be able to pass initiatives more often through the government. Invoking the president’s formula of “a strong president, an influential parliament, and an accountable government,” she expressed confidence that parliament’s influence will grow, especially in the social sphere. According to her, many of the current convocation’s social initiatives were never carried through to completion.

For Daniya Espaeva, the transition to a unicameral parliament means, first of all, an increase in the number of committees and working groups. “This will produce far more contentious debate during the discussion of bills. Amendments will now be introduced not on behalf of individual deputies, but by entire parties, increasing competition in the lawmaking process,” she says.

Espaeva also hopes that a unicameral parliament will make the budget process more systematic and coordinated. The deputy believes the government’s report on budget execution should not be considered as a mere formality, but should become the basis for the next year’s budget plan. In addition, the Quryltai should function as an institution that evens out infrastructural inequality between regions.

Pavel Kazantsev avoided making a precise forecast for the period ahead. But he stressed that the work of the future Quryltai will depend directly on “who comes in” and on how the factions and main areas of work are organized. The political composition will be shaped by party lists and by who is responsible for difficult subjects ranging from the digital economy to taxes and water policy.

He also said that the Amanat party had “grown completely exhausted.” For that reason, it would not have been able to carry out the president’s plans over the next seven or eight years, a period of global crisis. “[The merger of the parties is needed not simply to survive this difficulty, but to emerge stronger from it.] As the Chinese say, crisis is a time of new opportunities, and in such a difficult moment those who strengthen their base of preparation will win. We too will try to show results in this test,” Kazantsev concluded.

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