Does Lukashenka lack sceptre and throne?
- 11.02.2009, 11:36
“Nasha Niva” newspaper has compared the Belarusian leader with a Russian tsar and recalled usual end of Russian sovereigns.
Lukashenka is marketing himself as a tsar, and thus undermines fundamental respect to the law, believes journalist Barys Tumar. The author analyses the “handsome gesture” by the Belarusian ruler on February 6, when he asked Interior Minister Navumau to release murderers of “Pukhavichy arsonist”.
Addressing the chairman of the Supreme Court Valyantsina Sukala, Lukashenka said:
“I would like to ask to consider this criminal case liberally. And I ask you, please, treat them as your family members. Well, there was a rascal who terrorized people, the whole village. If men have done that, it means that they were really indignant, and all common people are on their side by the way. If a decision should be adopted in the framework of the law, I am ready for that, but it seems to me that you would be able to adopt a decision yourselves without me. These people should be released, and let the investigation be carried out. And I am even asking the court publicly, and I am unashamed of doing that, to consider this case carefully, and if there is a possibility, to support these people. They shouldn’t be imprisoned! Is it a great person who has died? He was roaming from prison to prison, and when released, he started terrorising the whole village”.
It was a brilliant populist dramatization in front of TV cameras. Sarkozy is a populist too, but it is impossible to imagine such a gesture by him. In democratic countries judicial power is independent from the executive one. It’s a law, Barys Tumar writes.
Searching for a prototype of Lukashenka as a politician, the journalist addresses the experience of the executive power in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy.
“A sovereign recognized by Belarusians once,” Barys Tumar writes, “the king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, was not able to punish by his decision even the most fallen person. The law didn’t allow that. Citizens, or nobility then, who made 10% of the population of the country, could be punished only by a court. A king could pardon, and he used that right, but only after a decision of the court. (…) “The state means us”, citizens believed, and they acted correspondingly, and thanks to that the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was an entity which existed for many centuries surrounded by stronger and very aggressive neighbours.
The format of Muscovy was totally different. There was no “we”, there was only “We, the tsar of Great, Little and White Rus…”, or “L’Etat c’est moi”. Moreover, unlike Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, a Russian tsar had not only legislative, but also executive and judicial power, as well as a sacral role.
The Belarusian tsar is also pardoning and punishing, “Nasha Niva” writes. Justice could be asked from a tsar. Our Father the Tsar. If something happens, the tsar is simply unaware of that. The tsar is never mistaken. That’s the image created for Lukashenka. The tsar of the nation, one of us, who has reached the top, a defender of a common man. “You are a little more than God for us,” as the chairman of Brest region executive committee said once.
But in European countries a president cannot have such “royal” powers. A president can grant a pardon, but only after a decision by an independent court. That’s the way justice acts in civilized states.
Barys Tumar notes that autocracy of the Belarusian leader is not simply an image any more. Today Lukashenka in fact keeps in his hands legistalive, executive and judicial powers. Separation of powers, formally guaranteed by the Constitution, is not realized in practice. How Lukashenka could be a “European leader” with such an attitude to the law and to the national language, when there is no separation of powers, asks the journalist.
Lukashenka’s regime is to end in the same way as Russian tsars and their entourage ended, “Nasha Niva” journalist concludes.