The Mäjilis (Kazakh: Mäjılıs, Мәжіліс, also transliterated as Mazhilis; "Assembly" in Kazakh) is the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Kazakhstan, known as the Parlamentı. The upper house of Parliament is the Senate of Kazakhstan. There are 107 seats (98+9). Members of Parliament are elected to five-year terms.[2]
After the 1995 Kazakh constitutional referendum was held on 30 August 1995 where Kazakhstani voters overwhelmingly approved a new draft of the Constitution of Kazakhstan, a bicameral Parliament was established that included the lower house Mäjilis.[3]
In the 1995 elections, under the new parliamentary structure, all seats in both houses of parliament were contested in December 1995; runoff elections filled twenty-three seats in the Mäjilis for which the initial vote was inconclusive. International observers reported procedural violations in the Mäjilis voting. The new parliament, which was seated on 30 January 1996, included 68 Kazakh and 31 Russian members; 10 deputies members of which were women.[citation needed]
In the aftermath of the 2004 elections, the Otan became the first party in the Mäjilis to hold the majority of seats which became bigger after the Asar, Civic Party, and Agrarian Party merged with Otan in 2006.
After the constitutional amendments in May 2007, the seats in the Mäjilis were expanded from 77 to 107, which 98 of them were elected through party-list proportional representation that was used for the first time in the 2007 legislative elections.[4] From there, Nur Otan won all the contested seats, eliminating any opposition in the Mazhilis.[5]
In the 2012 legislative elections, minor parties which were the Ak Zhol Democratic Party and Communist People's Party of Kazakhstan entered into Mäjilis however Nur Otan maintains its dominant-party control since then.[6]