Belarus 1996
In a very politically contentious process, the Belarusian Constitution was amended in 1996 to strengthen the role of the presidency. President Aleksander Lukashenko nominated a small committee of government officials and legal experts close to him to draft the amendments, following general guidelines given by him. These proposals vastly strengthened the presidency at the expense of the legislature, primarily, but also at the expense of the judiciary. The Lukashenko draft was published in August 1996, and was to be ratified in a referendum concurrent with scheduled legislative elections that November.
Under the 1994 Constitution, the legislature’s approval was required to hold the referendum; it could not change the president’s proposed questions, which included the ratification of the amendments. To counter, two parliamentary opposition parties, the Communists and the Agrarians, drafted a competing text, a moderately revised version of the 1978 Byelorussian SSR constitution, which would have had the effect of abolishing the presidency. Though its initial intent was to force Lukashenko to withdraw his proposal, Lukashenko’s refusal led the deputies to add the counterproposal to the November referendum. The Constitutional Court declared that both the president’s and parliament’s drafts represented completely new documents (rather than amendments), and thus ratification had to be conducted through the legislature and not via referendum.
On October 19-20, 1996, Lukashenko convened the five thousand member ‘All-Belorusian Peoples’ Meeting,’ an extra-constitutional body, to authorize his desired referendum despite parliamentary opposition. The democratic opposition again countered with a thousand member congress of its own. As the referendum neared, in early November some 70 members of the 199-seat legislature moved to impeach Lukashenko amid international opposition to the pending referendum. Following last-minute mediation by Russian officials, Lukashenko agreed to make the referendum advisory and appoint a joint parliamentary-executive conciliation committee afterwards, and the Parliament allowed the vote to proceed. Lukashenko then reneged and declared the referendum binding.
The amendments were ratified by referendum on November 24, 1996, and came into effect on November 27, following a short delay for counting and verification. Ratification required an absolute majority of registered voters; 84.05% of the electorate voted and 70.5% of them approved the Lukashenko document. (Parliament’s competing draft obtained only 7.9% of the votes.) An absolute majority of registered voters was needed to amend the constitution.