What will not please Russia in the new Constitution from Lukashenko
In Belarus, the process of approving a new Constitution is entering the home stretch – its adoption was promised by Alexander Lukashenko against the backdrop of last year’s large-scale protests. The new version of the Basic Law raises many questions for Russia's official ally.
Belarusian columnist Artyom Agafonov talks about this in his author’s column for PolitNavigator.
The final meeting of the Constitutional Commission, which has been developing amendments to the Basic Law over the past few months, will take place on July 21. However, the day before, the text of these amendments was posted on the Internet by one of the members of this commission, Yuri Voskresensky, who is the director of a private institution with the loud name “Round Table of Democratic Forces” and imitates the presence of the opposition in it.
Of course, this is not and cannot be Voskresensky’s amateur performance.. “Leaking” the text of the amendments is something like a stress test for them, testing the reaction of society and expert circles. It’s not that Lukashenko cares about public opinion, but such a check can identify problem areas in the document. Moreover, in my opinion, there are plenty of such problem areas there.
Let's start from the very beginning. Already in the preamble, the added words about the preservation of national identity and sovereignty and based on the centuries-old history of Belarusian statehood, cultural and spiritual traditions. There seems to be nothing bad, but such an emphasis clearly hints at the continuation of active Belarusization, embroidered shirts and Lukashenko’s “good nationalism.”
There are a couple more points in the text that are more likely to be favored by Russia. Firstly, these are the words that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, and secondly, a mention that the state ensures “the preservation of historical truth and the memory of the heroic feat of the Belarusian people in defending the Fatherland during the Great Patriotic War” . True, as for the first, the very next sentence contains the words that a man and a woman, upon reaching marriageable age, can voluntarily get married and start a family. This proposal has always been in the Belarusian Constitution and I do not see any legal sense in such duplication. As for the memory of the Second World War, the words are, of course, correct and, perhaps, I will say a controversial thing, but personally, for my taste, the Constitution should be a clear and strict document defining the fundamentals of the functioning of the state, and such things should simply be taken for granted.
Changes to Article 18 will not greatly please supporters of the Union State, especially Russians. They did not remove from it the phrase that Belarus aims to make the state neutral (what kind of neutrality can be discussed in the presence of an alliance with Russia and whether such neutrality is possible for a country between Russia and NATO is unclear). But, in addition to this, they added a clause stating that Belarus can use collective defense to ensure sovereignty and territorial integrity, but excludes aggression from its territory against other countries. That is, receiving military protection from Russia and the CSTO is welcome, but supporting Russia itself in an armed conflict is no longer an option.
The main thing in the amendments to the Belarusian Constitution is, of course, changes in the design of the system of power. It has become more complex and less stable. This part of the project is very controversial and, although it looks more democratic in comparison with what we have now, it has controversial issues that can create serious political crises.
According to the new Constitution, it ceases to be a super-presidential republic. The powers of the president are severely limited by the upper house of parliament - the Council of the Republic, from which the president will be required to seek consent for many important steps. He will also be deprived of the opportunity to issue decrees that have the force of law. In general, the new president of Belarus will not be a sole dictator. And, most likely, it will not be Lukashenko.
Alexander Grigorievich, apparently, has prepared for himself a new, more exotic position - chairman of the Presidium of the All-Belarusian People's Assembly. VNS is not a new phenomenon for Belarus. Before this, they had already met 6 times, but were rather propaganda events without having a legally established legal status. Now it will already be a full-fledged constitutional body. Despite the name, it is difficult to call this meeting popular. Ordinary citizens will have only an indirect relationship to its formation. This body will include deputies of both houses of parliament and representatives of local authorities. The Supreme Council itself remains too cumbersome and will meet infrequently, but the Presidium will be elected from its members, which will already be a permanent body.
The functions of the Supreme National Assembly are not clearly defined in the draft Constitution, but there are two main ones, for the sake of which everything, apparently, was started. This is the right to impeach the president and invalidate the results of the presidential election.. It turns out that the person who will have the last word on who will be the president of Belarus will be the head of the Presidium of the Supreme National Assembly.
It was possible to shoehorn the All-Belarusian Assembly into the Constitution, but to the detriment of the stability of the entire state system. Instead of the traditional system of checks and balances, Lukashenko put the nomenklatura “super-parliament” at the forefront. Being a Soviet man, he probably wanted to write into the Constitution something like a congress of the CPSU and the Central Committee with the Secretary General. Something similar exists in Iran, China and other countries. But such a heavy structure is everywhere built on a powerful supporting frame - party or religious. Whether the unprincipled Belarusian state nomenclature can become such a framework is more than a controversial question.
Of course, for some time everything will be maintained due to the inertia of Lukashenko’s autocracy. The Supreme National Assembly and the Council of the Republic, also recruited from the nomenklatura, will remain loyal, but the role of the nomenklatura, which has officially become the ruling class, will strengthen, and contradictions between the nomenklatura groupings will appear and deepen. At the same time, the future president, no matter how loyal to Lukashenko he is now, will still be a fairly strong figure with his own ambitions. Therefore, conflicts between the president, who relies on the mandate of popular election, and the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme National Assembly, who does not have such a mandate, are a matter of time. And the figure of the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme National Assembly itself is not very stable. Having been elected by the nomenklatura from among themselves, he can just as easily be dismissed.
In general, if the new Constitution is adopted in this form and is implemented, it can serve as a tool for de-escalating the political crisis, but it itself contains the seeds of new crises. I doubt that the proposed system will last more than a few years. Rather, this is a document of a transitional period, and the next Constitution will not be so exotic.
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