Opinions & Interviews

Lukashenko: Constitutional process will be smooth

An archive photo

OSTROVETS DISTRICT, 7 November (BelTA) – The constitutional process will be smooth, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko told the media during his visit to the Belarusian nuclear power plant on 7 November, BelTA has learned.

“We will adopt the new Constitution. We will be moving forward. This will be done without any destructive reforms and upheavals. Belarusians do not need them,” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

In his words, the amendments to the Constitution have been in the works for more than a year already. Two draft documents were submitted to the president. He rejected both calling them “too soft” and not meeting the demands of the society. “I suggested the changes to be more drastic and we drafted a third one. No Putin, no Russia pushed me towards it. We have been working on the new Constitution for three or four years now. Who have ever pushed us? They have never interfered in our affairs. Nobody has pushed Lukashenko anywhere in a quarter of a century and no one will be able to do so. Everyone should understand this,” the head of state stressed.

Aleksandr Lukashenko added that dialogue platforms had been set up in the country to discuss possible changes to the Constitution. The president was the one to support such discussions at the regional level, among workers and students. “We needed these dialogue platforms for people to make their proposals and for the authorities to hear them,” he added.

The president stated that participants of these dialogue platforms raised different issues, including the launch of the nuclear power plant and electricity prices, U.S. election, events in the neighboring countries.

“We are currently working on a plan of our future steps and gathering the information. When we gather it for the Belarusian People's Congress, we need to discuss it with experts. By then we should already have the outlines of the new Constitution. For this, we need to set up a new working group of experts, which is what I am doing now. As I said, you cannot write the Constitution from a detention center or from the street. It is a document which should be developed by experts. Yet, they need proposals from the society, and these proposals reflect the problems we are discussing with the people. In this way we involve millions of people not only in the discussion of the Constitution but also in its development,” the head of state stated.

The president stressed that the Constitution would be shaped by the people: “No falsifications. The Constitution our people adopt means the life and the government that we will have in the future.”

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