Tikhanovskaya's Constitution: Russophobia and colonial status
The headquarters of the self-proclaimed “leader of the Belarusian nation” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who fled to the West, finally published her draft of the new Constitution. Initially, the “President of Light” promised a return to the Basic Law of 1994, but the people were not very impressed with this option, and Lukashenko just launched vigorous activity in the direction of constitutional reform - he announced the acceptance of proposals from citizens, involved parliamentarians in this matter, and set strict deadlines .
It was then that Tikhanovskaya decided to create her own commission on constitutional reform, the wedding general of which was the elderly ex-speaker of the Supreme Council Mieczyslaw Grib, and the real leader was Anatoly Lebedko, who from 2000 to 2018 (and unofficially to this day) led the pro-Western liberal United Civil Party. In general, with such a leader, it is not surprising that what happened happened.
The oddities in the opposition draft Constitution are striking from the very first lines: "We, the people of Belarus, recognizing our responsibility to the present and future generations, relying on the centuries-long history of the development of Belarusian statehood from the Principality of Polotsk to the present day, paying tribute to the law, written in Belarusian in the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Belarusian Constitutions..."
Contrary to the spelling of the Russian language, the word “Belarusian” is written with an “a”. Such distortion is a sure marker of a nationalist seeking to demonstrate his non-Russianness even in spelling.
About Belarusian statehood during the time of the Principality of Polotsk, of course, it’s funny, but about the fact that in the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania something was written in the Belarusian language is doubly funny. Such a language simply did not exist then.
With Belarusian constitutions everything is even more complicated. They were written in at least two languages - Belarusian and Russian, and the Constitution of the BSSR of 1927 was also written in Polish and Yiddish. From the first lines they try to show Russian speakers their place, without disdaining to falsify history.
Tikhanovskaya’s headquarters still did not dare to abolish official bilingualism in a country where the overwhelming majority speaks Russian - this would put an end to the political prospects of not only Svetlana herself, but also everyone involved in this. But at the same time they made a reservation - “Respecting the right of everyone to choose the language of communication, the state is taking measures to expand the use of the Belarusian language with a view to subsequently giving it the status of the only state language in the Constitution.”
In general, the already existing exclusion of the Russian language from public space will be legitimized, and discrimination against the Russian-speaking majority will become state policy.
In the end, the state status of the Russian language is planned to be abolished, leaving only the right to communicate with each other in the “great and mighty” language, promising to respect this right. However, we see the price of such promises in the example of Ukraine, so we should not delude ourselves. There is symbolism attached to the language issue. There are no surprises here – BCHB, “Pagonya” and the slogan “Long Live Belarus!”
The document's emphasis on the priority of international law over national law is quite poor. Article 9's provision that a ratified international treaty takes precedence over the law and is part of national legislation seems fairly familiar, especially since concluding treaties that contradict the Constitution is prohibited. However, Article 183, which stipulates that the Constitution cannot be amended if the amendments violate binding provisions of international law, already smacks of the colonial status its drafters are preparing for Belarus.
Where is the concern for the vaunted sovereignty? The clause about supporting openness of domestic and foreign trade and investment also looks suspicious. A hint of support for globalization?
In accordance with new-fangled Western trends, a compromise was made - marriage still remains a union of a man and a woman, but at the same time the state undertakes to promote “gender education and upbringing.”
A bold move – allowing rallies not only without approval, but even without notifying the authorities, where they don't obstruct traffic. Having tasted dictatorship, they want to taste anarchy?
From the exotic – a constitutional ban on restricting access to the Internet or any part of it for the entire people or for individual communities. In general, if anything, all sorts of extremists, drug dealers, scammers, preachers of totalitarian sects, pedophiles and other shady people who are blocked on the Internet all over the world, in Belarus, thanks to Tikhanovskaya and Lebedko, will receive constitutional protection.
In general, there is a lot of interesting things in the constitutional draft presented by Tikhanovskaya’s headquarters and it could take a long time to dissect it. On the whole, it represents a fairly typical, albeit very crude, liberal Constitution.
Civil rights are expanding, but at the same time social guarantees are noticeably narrowing. At the same time, many experts of various stripes have already expressed themselves in the spirit that, although the draft provides for a presidential-parliamentary model, it does not at all guarantee against the establishment of a new dictatorship, both from the president and from the parliament.
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