ASTANA – Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev appointed ten new deputies to the Senate, an upper house of the Kazakh Parliament on Jan. 24, reported the Akorda press service.
Based on Kazakh election law, among the 50 deputies in the Senate, 40 are elected through indirect suffrage by electors and ten senators are appointed by the President. Five of them are to be proposed by the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan. Photo credit: senate.parlam.kz
The President’s right to appoint ten deputies to the Senate, which consists of 50 deputies, is enshrined in the country’s Constitution. Five of them are recommended by the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan, an advisory body chaired by the President and aimed at representing the various ethnic groups that make up Kazakhstan.
Before last year’s constitutional amendments, the President appointed 15 deputies to the Senate. The constitutional amendments also abolished the Assembly’s quota in the Mazhilis and transferred it to the Senate, but reduced it from 9 to 5 deputies.
On Jan. 25, the Central Election Commission registered the newly appointed deputies and 20 deputies elected on Jan. 14.
Among the deputies appointed by Tokayev are former Supreme Court chair Zhakip Asanov, former deputy chief of presidential staff and Senate chairperson Maulen Ashimbaev, former head of Socio-Cultural Development Committee at the Senate Nurtore Zhusip, prominent disability rights activist Lyazzat Kaltaeva, and former deputy chair of the Senate Askar Shakirov.
The Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan proposed Evgeny Bolgert, Zakirzhan Kuziev, Nuriya Niyazova, Alisher Satvaldiev, and Gennady Shipovskikh as the deputies of the Senate. All of them are members of the Assembly representing different ethnic groups in the country.
