A log was placed on the successor. A draft of a new Constitution has been published in Belarus
Belarus has finally published a draft of a new Constitution, which is planned to be approved in a referendum at the end of February.
After numerous modifications and “additional polishing”, the Belarusian constitutional unfinished construction was presented to the public, and the reform of the state structure of Belarus has reached its decisive stage. The document turned out to be ambiguous. In this article I will try to summarize the first main impressions after reading it.
1. There has been little more clarity regarding the prospects for the transition of power and Lukashenko’s political future. Alexander Grigorievich has “reset to zero” and theoretically may well remain president until 2035, when he turns 81, and then spend the rest of his days as a member of the Supreme Council and a lifelong senator with immunity.
At the same time, his honor and dignity will continue to be protected by law, and for insulting a former president, one could, as now, end up in prison. The status of the ex-president will be determined by a separate law. That is, at a minimum, Alexander Grigorievich has already secured the position of a kind of Belarusian “elbasy”. However, it is most likely that, after serving his current term, he will move to the position of Chairman of the All-Belarusian People's Assembly. It will be very uncomfortable for him to be in the presidential post with a greatly simplified impeachment procedure placed at the disposal of the Supreme Council.
2. The All-Belarusian People's Assembly, despite the foundations of the constitutional system and Article 6 of the draft Constitution, which enshrines the separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial, received the official constitutional status of the “highest representative body of democracy”, thus becoming a weighty trash lying across all three branches. It’s loudly said about democracy. The procedure for forming the All-Belarusian Assembly is not spelled out in detail in the draft Constitution, but what is written is enough to understand that appointees from the nomenklatura will sit there.
3. Belarus remains a presidential republic, but presidential powers are nevertheless noticeably curtailed. Thus, the president will lose the right to issue decrees that have the force of law, and the appointment of the prime minister and some other senior officials will be carried out after preliminary approval in the lower house of parliament, and not approved by parliament after the fact, as now.
4. Dual power, the need to avoid which was one of the stated reasons for delaying the development of the draft Constitution, is not excluded in the published document. It is quite possible to imagine a situation in which the future president will turn out to be a reformer and come into conflict with Lukashenko’s appointees from the Supreme National Assembly.
In the hands of the Supreme National Assembly there is a powerful cudgel of impeachment, and the president has a mandate of people's trust, control over the security forces and regional leadership. According to the new Constitution, he retains the right to appoint and remove governors and chairmen of executive committees. In this case, a serious political crisis is guaranteed, and it is not obvious who will prevail in it.
5. Becoming president will be more difficult. The age limit has been increased from 35 to 40 years, a twenty-year residency requirement has been added, as well as a provision that only a citizen who does not have and has not previously had citizenship or a residence permit or other document of a foreign state entitling them to benefits and others can become a candidate. advantages. In general, the owners of the popular “Pole’s Card” in Belarus are walking through the forest.
Unfortunately, the discriminatory provision that only citizens of the Republic of Belarus by birth can run for office has not been abolished. Numerous Belarusians born in other republics of the Soviet Union are still deprived of active voting rights in presidential elections, even if they have lived in Belarus all their lives, and at the time of birth their parents were on a business trip. Such copying of American legislation is completely inappropriate for Belarus, which 30 years ago was part of a single huge state.
6. There will be no elections in Belarus for more than two years. The next single election day, on which a new parliament and local councils will be elected, will take place on the last Sunday of February 2024. Until this time, Lukashenko clearly hopes to stabilize the situation by finally strangling the opposition.
7. Article 32 of the draft Constitution establishes marriage as a union of a woman and a man, and this could be called a victory for healthy conservatism if it were not written in the next paragraph that a woman and a man, upon reaching marriageable age, have the right to voluntarily enter into marriage and create family. Why it was necessary to repeat the same thing twice is a mystery.
Much more important in the new edition of this article is the stated duty of parents to prepare their children for socially useful work, to instill culture and respect for the laws, historical and national traditions of Belarus. This may sound good, but something tells me that these lines could serve as a basis for removing children from the families of unreliable citizens for failure to fulfill parental responsibilities.
8. The right to health care, guaranteed in the current version of the Constitution, including free treatment in state health care institutions, is now supplemented by the clause “in the manner prescribed by law,” and the obligation of Belarusian citizens to “take measures to preserve and strengthen their own health” has been introduced. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that the free state healthcare guaranteed to everyone in Belarus will soon no longer exist. The state is becoming less and less social.
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