MINSK, 25 June (BelTA) – Belarusians will not accept a decision that has been dictated from the outside. Prime Minister of Belarus Roman Golovchenko made the statement at a session of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly on 25 June, BelTA has learned.
On 25 June Roman Golovchenko presented a bill on amending the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus for the first reading in the lower chamber of the Belarusian parliament.
Roman Golovchenko said: “It's been more than a quarter of a century since when the Constitution was adopted in this Oval Hall in order to determine a development path of our own for a young sovereign state. The constitutional foundations of Belarusian statehood, which were laid in that period, ensure the necessary conditions for Belarus to become a strong and stable country and a genuine state for the peoples. It is obvious that a self-directed political entity, which is located in the center of Europe and has no desire to play by the rules imposed by outside forces, worries many. The most Jesuitic methods and tricks are used starting with lies and ending with far-fetched sanctions.”
In his words, the latest events have proven that Belarusians will not accept a decision dictated from the outside. “We will make our own decision based on needs of the Belarusian society. The bill that has been presented today is such a decision,” the official noted. This document provides for amending the Constitution to allow electing members of the parliament and members of municipal councils of deputies on the same day. The bill also provides for extending the tenure of the current members of municipal councils of deputies. According to Roman Golovchenko, these proposals were formulated as a result of a nationwide collection of initiatives in favor of amending the Constitution. Citizens submitted a significant number of proposals in favor of electing deputies of all levels on the same day.
Roman Golovchenko went on saying that the initiative had been evaluated by experts of the Constitutional Commission, had been backed by the parliament, and had been brought in by the head of state into the parliament upon the parliament's motion. “I would like to emphasize the active stance of my fellow Belarusians, their personal involvement in the political future of the country. There is no doubt that this initiative that comes from the people will benefit Belarus,” Roman Golovchenko stressed. “Someone may start wondering why it has to be done now instead of during the referendum to amend the Constitution. One may wonder why this decision has to be made virtually on the eve of the referendum. I'll explain. In line with the existing regulations the next elections to municipal councils of deputies are supposed to take place in early 2022 while elections to the parliament are supposed to take place in 2023. If the Constitution is amended by a referendum and the single ballot day is introduced, members of the municipal councils of deputies, who get elected in 2022, will stay in office for slightly more than a year until the parliamentary elections in 2023. Such a short tenure will affect their performance and will reduce their interest in seeking nominations in 2022. And if members of the parliament are elected in January 2022, they will be objectively unable to realize their powers and fulfill their election programs in the time they have left.”
The bill will allow the current members of municipal councils of deputies to stay in office until new members are elected on the single ballot day. Thus, the bill is designed to address the specified undesired consequences.
The bill also provides for a number of additional advantages. First, budget money will be saved. For instance, the organization of elections to the municipal councils of deputies in 2022 will cost about Br25 million. Half of the sum – Br12.916 million – is already appropriated by this year's budget, Roman Golovchenko said. If the bill is passed, these appropriations will be saved. Apart from that, the synchronization of election campaigns will create additional conditions for optimizing costs during future stages of the country's public and political life. “Certainly, it does not mean that financial costs will be automatically halved. Taking into account the increased workload of election commissions their operational costs will increase. More money will have to be spent on printed products, salaries, transportation, and the rest. At the same time there is a clear potential for saving money and we should exploit it,” the prime minister said.
Second, the bill will also streamline election cycles. According to the Constitution, members of municipal councils of deputies and members of the parliament can stay in office for four years. The approach stipulated by the bill will simplify the organization of elections, will allow increasing the quality of oversight over the observance of election laws, will enable conditions for establishing effective communications between representative institutions of all levels and the civil society. It will be easier for candidates and their initiative groups representing the same political forces to do pre-election campaigning. Single visits to constituencies have an advantage from the sanitary and epidemic point of view due to the emergence of new challenges in the sphere of epidemic security, Roman Golovchenko specified. He continued: “Third, the single ballot day will allow concentrating the activity of voters, orderly nominate candidates and perform pre-election campaigning. In turn, it will grant additional guarantees for observing election rights of citizens – from the right to be elected to ensuring the expression of will. The single ballot day is expected to make elections of members of municipal councils of deputies and elections of members of the parliament equally important. People will know more about candidates in all the representative democracy institutions, which will allow them to better learn about subtleties of the election process.”
The single ballot day is not a Belarusian invention. The concept exists in election laws of many European countries as well as the USA, Canada, and Mexico. Russia implemented the single ballot day in 2006 and has been using this algorithm since then. Recommendations were issued within the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 2014 to encourage the possibility of single ballot days for local elections and referendums in the CIS member states. Experts believe that such unification improves the election process, allows normalizing the election timeframe, and preserves the stability of the political system, Roman Golovchenko concluded.
