Before the All-Belarusian People's Assembly, experts voiced the expectations that the draft change will be presented on it, and the referendum on them will be held in the spring of this year. However, it turned out that a change in the constitution will be discussed during the entire 2021, and a referendum on developed amendments will be held at the beginning of 2022. From possible changes in the course of the ANS, there was a refusal of neutrality. In addition, the President allocated a number of priorities, according to which Belarus will develop in the coming years. What is behind these plans and how they will affect the relationship of Minsk with Moscow, in an interview with Eurasia.Expert, the Deputy Chairman of the ROO "White Rus" Alexander Shatko appreciated.
- Alexander Viktorovich, why, in your opinion, the head of state marked the deadline for the constitutional referendum in a year? What key changes to the Constitution should be expected?
- To make a normal constitutional act of change in the main law, you need a serious preparation, and you need to understand in which direction to act. To date, it is necessary to change thousands of legislative acts so that they are the backup of the Constitution, and not just a change in some points. Therefore, the period that the president determined is even very short. I, as in the past, the deputy and dealing with all these acts would give this process for at least a year. But the president set the task, it means that our parliament will work in very serious and hard mode.
Today, the president reflected all priorities (because we still have the presidential republic) that he sees, then we will work on these priorities. Including, some political changes are waiting for us: we are preparing a wide coalition to create a batch of public unity today. This is our idea, and it matures for a long time, but in order for it to become, it is necessary to spend the appropriate libez in society, work on authority. If we talk about a thousand border to create a party, today there is no party except LDPB, this line will not overstep.
- Will the All-Belarusian Assembly be able to give impetus to the development of Russian-Belarusian relations?
- Yesterday, the President said that we can talk about the vectorial development of Belarus, exports, imports, cooperation with foreign countries in normal mode, but no country will not be such a reliable, stable and friendly partner as Russia.
Therefore, we do not doubt it in Russian, nor in the eastern vector is our main direction. If someone considers that it goes to the detriment of the European direction, then these are their problems. We will cooperate with everyone, but not to the detriment of Russia and relations in the Union State.
- In the course of the All-Belarusian People's Assembly, the Foreign Minister Vladimir Makay said that "the desire for neutrality enshrined in the Constitution does not correspond to the current situation." What is this statement?
- This is an unborn format. The fact is that neutrality implies non-nuclear education. The nuclear power plant was built on the territory of Belarus, and it already functions (while in test mode, but it runs through the IAEA and must pass all stress tests). Naturally, there are already nuclear fuel on the territory of Belarus, which can well serve to create weapons. But we are not a completely neutral country, we cannot be a neutral country in geopolitics. We participate in military blocks, and we have a treaty with Russia, which is a nuclear power, for mutual assistance. There is no need to talk about neutrality, but this is neutral not a military, it is a neutrality peaceful. Having a peaceful atom in Belarus, we can no longer say that we are a non-nuclear power.
- Muck also called on Belarusians to "abandon a flawed look at his country - we are small, we want to go to Europe, we want to get down to someone and so on" and announced the development of a new foreign policy concept. What key changes to expect from her?
- The events that occurred in Belarus, as well as the events that occur in Russia, those sanctions that occur around say that it is impossible to consider countries friendly and simply skip fellows, pretending that nothing happened. So no longer be. As they say, we are a small, but proud people. We have a powerful partner and friend (Russia), we have countries included in the Customs Union, we have the CIS countries, and today we will not be exchanged for some reversals and will not go to the EU.
We want to be equal partners. If the EU countries do not have enough strength and desire for this, it means that we will build our policies more hard, if enough - more softly, but again, not to the detriment of relations with the Eurasian economic space and with the union of two states.
- Can the Constitution be recorded in the new edition of the Constitution to activate integration construction in the Union State and EAEU? What factors will it depend on?
- To date, it is not worth waiting for the revisions of the Belarusian Constitution regarding changes in relations for the best or worse party between the two countries within the Union State or Eurasian Economic Space. There are other treaties there, and we clearly determined that this is priority for us, and in our Constitution we will change some completely small things, because all other constitutional stages, since 1994, with additives from 1996, and so on, Contribute to the integration of Russia and Belarus, as well as between the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union. At these moments, no changes in the Constitution are envisaged, these are only internal political strategies. We probably still be very politically tightened to these countries by creating a political political system and so on.
- What scenarios will develop a situation in Russian-Belarusian relations in the near future? What results and agreements should be expected from new negotiations of the presidents of Belarus and Russia?
- This is the deepening of integration. These are economic, political integration, military cooperation, deep integration in the framework of production (mechanical engineering), the overall financing of the projects of a greater level, probably, it is also a more serious attitude to the licensing of the internal import substitution product between countries. That is, it is a step towards the road maps that we have not yet been finalized. Probably, this is a serious step towards attracting all road maps and their activation.
Announced Maria Mamzelkina