By Felix Light and Mariya Gordeyeva
ALMATY, July 7 (Reuters) – Kazakhstan’s constitutional court said on Tuesday that President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is eligible to seek a new term at the helm of the Central Asian energy and minerals producing nation under a new constitution that took effect last week.
The ruling effectively resets the clock again for Tokayev, who was previously limited to a single seven-year term counting from 2022, when he pushed through an earlier constitutional rewrite.
Tokayev, who first took office in 2019 as the handpicked successor of Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, requested the court’s opinion himself.
Kazakhstan drafted and approved the new constitution within weeks earlier this year, sparking widespread speculation about Tokayev’s political future.
It maintains the limit of a single, seven-year term for presidents, but the court’s ruling means terms served under the old basic law would not count towards that limit.
It was not immediately clear whether Tokayev would have to seek a new term in snap presidential elections, or whether he will serve out his term through 2029 under the old constitution.
The new constitution creates a vice-presidency and streamlines parliament into a smaller, single-chamber legislature. Snap parliamentary elections are scheduled for August 23.
Once a Soviet diplomat and senior U.N. official, Tokayev served as Kazakhstan’s prime minister and foreign minister before succeeding Nazarbayev as president in 2019.
He broke with his predecessor in January 2022, after a wave of nationwide unrest that left hundreds dead and which Tokayev described as a coup attempt by Nazarbayev loyalists.
(Reporting by Maria Gordeyeva and Felix Light; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Andrei Khalip)
