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Politics

Tokayev names all 10 judges of the Constitutional Court in one morning, and the People’s Council he appointed on Tuesday sits for the first time

President Tokayev appointed 10 judges of the Constitutional Court by decrees published on Wednesday morning, 5 days after he reappointed Elvira Azimova as its chairwoman, Akorda’s list shows: Saken Abdolla, Leila Zhakayeva, Kairat Zhakipbayev, Aizhan Zhatkanbayeva, Aigul Kydyrbayeva, Kanat Musin, Bakyt Nurmukhanov, Sergey Skryabin, Aslan Tukiyev and Sergey Udartsev. The Kurultai gave its consent to the 10 at its sitting the same morning, on the presentation of Roman Sklyar, the head of the presidential administration, and in the same sitting cleared 8 members of the audit chamber, whom the president then appointed, and 6 of the election commission, Kazinform reported between 10:24 and 10:33. The same day the Qazaqstan Halyq Kenesi, the 126-member People’s Council whose composition he approved on Tuesday, opens its first session in Astana. In 5 days the second republic has re-seated the heads of the court, the election commission and the audit chamber, named a full bench and convened a consultative chamber, every one of them by the president’s signature, and the bench with a consent the Kurultai gave in a morning.

By CAW Editorial23 September 2026
The base of a pale stone column seen from ground level in raking morning light, with a single amber leaf caught in the joint between the plinth and the paving.

The court created on 1 January 2023 had 11 members, the chair and 10 judges, and the old constitution split the 10 between the president, who named 4, and the 2 chambers of the old parliament, which named 3 each. Wednesday’s list of 10 carries one signature. The constitution adopted at the referendum of 15 March and in force since 1 July replaced the Senate and the Mazhilis with a single Kurultai of 145 deputies, whose part in the appointments is the consent it gave on Wednesday morning; the decree’s page gives the names and the post and nothing else.

Six of the 2023 bench’s 10 judges return and 4 do not. Zhakipbayev, Zhatkanbayeva and Nurmukhanov were 3 of the president’s 4 appointees then; Kydyrbayeva was one of the Senate’s 3, Musin and Udartsev 2 of the Mazhilis’s 3. Roman Podoprigora, Assan Eskendirov, Yerkin Ongarbayev and Yerlan Sarsembayev, who left the court in January 2025 to become justice minister and presented the People’s Council bill to the old parliament in May, are not on the list; Abdolla, Zhakayeva, Skryabin and Tukiyev are new to it. Azimova has chaired since the court opened; her reappointment on Friday came with no stated reason, as CAW reported.

The consent came the same morning, presented by the president’s own chief of staff.

The bench is the third institution of the new constitution to be filled in 5 days. On Friday 18 September the president reappointed Azimova, the election commission’s Nurlan Abdirov and the audit chamber’s Alikhan Smailov; on Tuesday he signed the 126 names of the People’s Council and convened it for Wednesday and Thursday; on Wednesday he named the judges. The Kurultai and the vice-presidency were seated first.

What the sequence shows is where the new constitution puts the pen. Article 56 makes the judges’ appointment conditional on the Kurultai’s consent by a majority of all its deputies, and the chamber gave it in one sitting with no published count. The consent came the same morning, presented by the president’s own chief of staff. On paper the People’s Council can put draft laws before the Kurultai and initiate a referendum; the court can strike down laws, on paper; the 3 chairs run the vote, the audit and the constitutional review. Each is now staffed by decree, and the first test of each is whether it produces a decision the presidency did not ask for.

The Council’s first session, in Astana on 23 and 24 September, elects its chairman under the law’s Article 8; the decree convening it names no agenda. The court’s new judges take office under the law on the court in its 2026 wording; the decree gives no oath date.

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