Lukashenka about referendum: ‘No paving way for maidans and maidan morons in Belarus!’
No referendum will be held in Belarus in the near future, president Alyaksandr Lukashenka said during his annual State of the Nation Address to the Belarusian people and the National Assembly on Tuesday.
“Certain hotheads claim that any day now the president will set the day of a referendum on amending the Constitution. Dear friends, once and for all I want to say and to be heard by ‘concerned’ media, I mean those particularly concerned about the recent discussions of amendments to the Law on Mass Media. They are staying abroad, receiving money and expressing outrage without any reason. I have never acted foul towards our people and I will never do so. I know where I came from and how I won presidential elections. I made a vow and I will never break it otherwise we will have another Armenia here. One must not play games with people. If there is a referendum, we will inform the nation in advance, in accordance with the law. As for me, I have not even considered the issue of some referendum,” Lukashenka stressed.
In 2016, Alyaksandr Lukashenka raised the question of constitutional reform for the first time. In January 2018, Lidziya Yarmoshyna, Chairperson of the Central Election Commission, said that he Belarusian Electoral Code might be amended during the ‘modernization of the Constitution’. According to her, the president stressed the need to ‘keep the Constitution current’.
According to independent political scientists, the Belarusian leader might have changed his mind amid protests in Armenia.
“If anyone hopes that we will change the Constitution and this will pave the way for our maidans and maidan morons, they are stunningly mistaken. This will not happen as long as I am President of the country,” he warned.
On March 15, Belarus’ Constitution Day, Lukashenka admitted the possibility of amending the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus. Not specifying what amendments might be made to the Fundamental Law, he said that law making was a ‘continuous process’ and ‘living organism’ which should be improved to keep up with the ‘pace of life’.
A bit later, Lukashenka also told Georgian journalists that some functions of the President might be transferred to the executive authorities, the government, and the parliament.
24 years ago, on 15 March 1994, the first-ever Constitution of independent Belarus was adopted. But it should be noted that in the 1996 referendum, the majority of voters approved of constitutional amendments put forward by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, which dramatically increased the president’s power. Among other things, these amendments gave Lukashenka’s decrees the force of law, gave him near-total control over the budget and extended his term to 2001.
Belsat.eu
