MINSK, 12 July (BelTA) – All the opponents of 39-year-old Aleksandr Lukashenko during the presidential election held in 1994 wanted to set the age requirement for the president in the Constitution at 40 years. Sergei Gaidukevich, who led the Liberal Democratic Party in 1995-2019 and has run for presidency several times, shared recollections as part of the documentary “One for all” released by the Belarusian TV channel ONT on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the introduction of presidency in Belarus, BelTA has learned.
In the course of developing and adopting the Constitution of 1994 the matter of the country’s political system became the stumbling block very rapidly. There was a lot of talk in favor of considering the parliamentary form of government. “The main elite inclined towards it. But the parliamentary form is the most unstable form there is,” Sergei Gaidukevich noted.
It was also necessary to set the age requirement for the president. To put it simply, to specify at what age a candidate can run for presidency. “Aleksandr Lukashenko was 39 years old back then. The Constitution was adopted in March 1994. There were plans to set the age requirement for the president at 40 years. Not lower than that. It is true. Who demanded that? Quite naturally all the opponents, who ran for presidency. Without an exception,” the politician said.
Grigory Vasilevich, who was head of the Constitutional Law Chair of the Law Faculty at Belarusian State University in 1991-1994, was a member of the commission in charge of developing the Constitution and focused on the content of the first edition of the Basic Law of Belarus. “For three and a half years I worked on the text of the Constitution together with my colleagues. The matter was long in the making. After all, the draft of the Constitution was ready by October 1991. But in the end it was determined that the country needed exactly that president [with the kind of power and the role in the government system] that the Constitution stipulated on 15 March 1994,” Grigory Vasilevich said.
This is how Belarus became one of the last countries in the post-Soviet space to determine its form of government. “It was impossible to protract it anymore. The country needed a person to determine the future way of life. During the presidential election of 1994 some viewed the candidate Lukashenko as a dark horse. Some viewed him as a clear favorite,” the authors of the documentary noted.
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