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Politics

Kazakhstan’s People’s Council elects Yerlan Koshanov its chairman by 120 votes to 1, and the week’s seating of the second republic is complete

The Qazaqstan Halyq Kenesi elected Yerlan Koshanov, the last chairman of the abolished Mazhilis, as its chairman at its first session in Astana on Wednesday: 121 ballots came out of the urn, none of them spoiled, 120 for him and 1 abstention, Kazinform reported at 15:02. President Tokayev had proposed him at the session’s opening as “a responsible, qualified and experienced statesman” for a post that “should be held by a person known in the country, able to become the link between the people and the power”, and told the members that “a special responsibility rests on each member of the Halyq Kenesi”. In 5 days the second republic has re-seated the heads of its court, election commission and audit chamber, named a full constitutional bench with the Kurultai’s consent, and given its consultative chamber a chairman who ran the presidential administration from September 2019 to February 2022.

By CAW Editorial23 September 2026
A single blank paper ballot lying alone on a bare pale table in soft light, with a small amber pencil laid beside it.

The session was opened by Kuanysh Zhaisanbayev, the Council’s deputy chairman and head of its secretariat, who had a counting commission formed before the ballot; the president spoke, the commission counted, and the count is the session’s one published number. One abstention is the session’s only dissent. The Council, which the constitutional law of 5 June calls the “supreme consultative body”, has 126 members serving 4-year terms, every one of them named in the president’s decree of Tuesday, and the law’s Article 8 leaves the choice of chairman to the session; the session chose the president’s candidate at the first ballot.

Koshanov, born in 1962, was akim of the Karaganda region from 2017 to 2019, ran the presidential administration from September 2019 to February 2022 and chaired the Mazhilis from then until the new constitution folded the lower chamber into the Kurultai, which is to say through the amendments of 2022 and the referendum of 15 March. The president’s account of him, on Kazinform’s record, was “a responsible, qualified and experienced statesman” with service in the regions and in the parliament’s reform.

On paper the Council can put draft laws before the Kurultai and initiate a referendum. On its first day it formed a counting commission and elected the president’s nominee. The week’s sequence now reads in full: on Friday 18 September the president reappointed Elvira Azimova to the Constitutional Court, Nurlan Abdirov to the election commission and Alikhan Smailov to the audit chamber; on Tuesday he signed the 126 names; on Wednesday morning the Kurultai gave its consent to 10 judges, presented by his chief of staff, and to 8 audit-chamber members and 6 election commissioners, and by mid-afternoon the Council had a chairman. Two votes are on the record for all of it, the Kurultai’s majority, whose count was not published, and the Council’s 120 to 1.

One abstention is the session’s only dissent.

What the chamber is for is the next question, and the session that runs into Thursday has no published agenda beyond the chairman. The Assembly of the People, whose 2008 law the Council’s law repealed, held 9 seats in the Mazhilis until 2022; the Council has none in the Kurultai and a right of legislative initiative instead. Its first use of that right, and the first draft law it sends across the square, will show whether 126 appointed members produce anything the presidency did not ask for. The count of 120 to 1 answers the only question the president put.

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