Innovations included in bill On Belarusian People’s Congress following public discussion
At a meeting with the President on bringing certain laws in line with the updated Constitution, Svetlana Lyubetskaya, the Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Legislation of the House of Representatives, reported on the finalisation of the draft Law On the Belarusian People’s Congress based on the results of public discussion
In total, according to her, about half a thousand responses were received, “Most of the proposals were constructive. Of these, two-thirds concerned the clarification of the wording of the draft articles themselves. About forty responses included a positive assessment of the bill in general, but no specific proposals. All received initiatives were carefully and comprehensively analysed. They were discussed at the Council of the Republic’s expert platform. As a result, those proposals that go beyond the provisions of the Constitution or contradict it were rejected.”
The deputy added that, taking into account the analysis of all initiative proposals, a number of them (with rational and well-founded ideas) were taken into account in the draft law. In particular, Article 3 of the draft law supplements two principles of the activities of the Belarusian People’s Congress: the rule of law and free discussion and decision-making, “Citizens, lawyers, insisted on this, apparently, being imbued at the stage of discussion of the Basic Law. Following a public discussion, Article 4 has been highlighted in the document in order to strengthen a special status of the Belarusian People’s Congress and clearly distinguish the competencies: it states that the Belarusian People’s Congress has no right to replace state bodies, perform their functions, or interfere into their activities.”
Moreover, citizens said that there is a maximum desire to participate in the Belarusian People’s Congress for various categories of society.
“Therefore, Article 6 determines that the Congress is formed from delegates representing various social strata and groups of society because people wrote in their appeals that they want workers, scientists, and managers to be there: delegates of different ages,” said Svetlana Lyubetskaya.
The MP also added that it was not clear to all citizens how the solution of the following issues would be initiated: amendments and additions to the Constitution, organisation of a nationwide referendum, consideration of issues of the legitimacy of elections, the establishment of holidays and public holidays.
“Therefore, it was determined in the relevant articles that the Presidium of the Belarusian People’s Congress or a group of delegates themselves in the amount of at least 1/3 of the total composition of the Congress will be able to initiate these issues. At the same time, for timely, complete, and thorough preparation for consideration by the Congress of such important issues as the legitimacy of elections, the removal of the president from office, the abolition of legal acts / decisions of state bodies, these issues will be preliminary discussed during meetings of the Congress’ bodies. We assume that these will be commissions, and the procedure itself will be established by the regulations,” explained Ms. Lyubetskaya.
