In an interview with Sovereign Qazaqstan, President Kassym Generous Tokayev said that under Kazakhstan’s current constitution, the president can be elected for a seven-year term, at the end of which his powers will expire.
Tokayev denied rumours of a referendum on constitutional amendments and stressed that the rule that the president can only be elected once “will never change again”.
“I firmly believe this, the constitutional reform was not aimed at further changing the Constitution in its current form,” the president emphasised.
He said he had floated the idea of a single seven-year term in closed discussions 15 years ago, but the proposal “did not find much support” at the time.
“After my election as president in 2019, our country has moved forward on the path of democratising the political system, liberalising public life and freeing the economy from monopoly,” Tokayev added.
Tokayev is the successor of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been president of Kazakhstan since 1991 and has held the post for more than 25 years. Nazarbayev resigned in March 2019. Tokayev, who was then President of the Senate, acted as acting head of state. In the summer of the same year, he won the extraordinary election for the presidency of Kazakhstan.
In September 2022, he signed a decree on early voting immediately after the adoption of amendments to the Constitution. According to the new version of the Constitution, the term of office was increased from five to seven years and re-election was prohibited. Tokayev was re-elected in November 2022.
