News & Events in Belarus

Lukashenko: Belarus has as much democracy and freedom as other countries

MINSK, 31 May (BelTA) – Belarus has as much democracy and freedom as other countries, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko said as he met with heads of constitutional courts of foreign countries on 31 May, BelTA has learned.

“I can assure you: there is as much democracy and freedom in Belarus as in our dear, brotherly Russia or in the West, or in developing countries. Just as much. Maybe we apply tougher requirements in what concerns law and order because we are not as rich as Russia. It can make a mistake and quickly fix it by tapping into its great wealth,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted.

The head of state remarked that Belarus does not possess such resources, so the country is slow with reforms: mistakes can be costly. “If we allow a mistake somewhere we have nothing to make up for it. This is why we are slow with reforms, apply a step-by-step approach. We tread carefully as if on thin ice so as not to stumble, not to make a mistake: we have no money or time to fix it. If we fall behind we will not be able to catch up. So it is better to move slowly but never stopping, never turning back or wandering off the path. This is our policy,” the president said.

Aleksandr Lukashenko noted that Belarus is often criticized for lack of democracy or inadequate protection of human rights. “I must tell you as someone who worked in the Parliament and who was involved in the drafting of the Constitution before taking up the president’s office: we thoroughly studied the constitutions of all countries. I took part in this work. There are no extraordinary novelties in our Constitution. We preserved the most acceptable things from the past and borrowed the rest. We, first of all, learned from our neighbors as we had similar development paths and were once one state with many of them. We also adopted a lot from the strongholds of democracy, first of all, from France and the United States,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted.

print version

make home page

add to bookmarks