Chaly: Lukashenka Has Very Little Time Left

The locomotive of history is leaving

The system created by Lukashenka contradicts the existence of any guarantees, including for himself. This opinion was expressed by analyst Siarhei Chaly in the project “Night with Chaly”:

“At the beginning of the year, Lukashenka signed amendments to the law on the president, in which a whole new chapter appeared. But in fact, this chapter creatively develops just one line, which is actually laid down in the Constitution: “The President of the Republic of Belarus has immunity.”

Previously, we were talking about the current president and immunity for the period he exercised his powers. The new chapter reads as follows: “Providing guarantees to the president who has ceased to exercise his powers, and members of his family.”

Namely: “The president who has ceased to exercise his powers and members of his family cannot be held accountable for actions committed in connection with the exercise of his presidential powers.”

There are two points here. First, who guarantees immunity? It’s one thing when you are promised it by political opponents or simply some other branch of government.

It’s a completely different matter when you write out an indulgence for yourself. This is almost simultaneously both a license to commit a crime and a sincere confession of it.

And second: when the law specifically prohibits the criminal prosecution of children for crimes committed by a parent, it indicates that he understands perfectly well how things really stand in the country’s legal system.

That is, it is possible to come up with such a ban only if such persecution is widespread enough. That's why it needs to be banned. And we really know a lot of such examples.

We must understand that this is not the first attempt that Lukashenka has made legislatively, thinking about what might happen after him. And along the way, he unexpectedly discovered that in the system that he himself had built, not a single guarantee worked.

Because a very simple question arises: when you have done everything in such a way that the person in power can make absolutely any decision, how long will it take for the one who takes the new position to understand that they are not bound by any obligations?

Everything that they are now trying to come up with, this whole story of restructuring the legal system, is about how we, having ceased to be responsible for what we have done, can still continue to control. But it doesn't work that way. There is no such way.

When you start to take a long-term view of them, you realize that they have very little time left. And what seems terrible to us is actually a violent administrative spasm in an attempt to catch on to the fact that the locomotive of history is leaving,” Chaly concludes.