Questions remain after lawmakers cut our social benefits within 1.5 hours
Volha Abramava, the only MP that voted down the legislation, says it is very common and nobody should be surprised.
“Even before when the majority had no problems with the law drafts, they would routinely have them passed at once in the two readings. Nobody should be surprised as long as everybody saw what was going on. What surprises me is that this legislation was actually proposed,” Abramava said.
Indeed, the majority had no problems with the draft, at least according to the vote numbers. Yet, at the previous session of the parliament, many lawmakers expressed discontent with the draft and voiced their amendments.
Passing the law in the two readings at once means that no amendments were debated. How could it be that nobody proposed anything?
“Additions and suggestions were voiced. A commission has been set up to draft the president’s decree so that all of those propositions and comments be taken into account in the final version of the edict. The aim is that everyone who does need targeted social assistance gets it,” MP Siargej Kascian responds.
Then, the question is: what were the lawmakers doing for so long, when the legislation was being drafted for several years, but the president’s decree has not be ready yet? What would they need the second reading for?
“The first reading is needed to approve the idea, the concept in principle. Yes or no. This is in accordance with our parliamentary procedures. During the second reading, lawmakers work on the details. When all the details are sorted out in the beginning, it is possible to pass legislation in the first and the second readings at once,” explains MP Hanna Burava.
Which of the other laws were passed in this way? The European Radio for Belarus poses this question to the veteran of the Belarusian parliamentarism, once the speaker of the first post-Soviet legislature, Mecyslau Hryb.
“This is not a normal practice. One thing is when a simple law is passed in two readings at once. But when the law affects millions of citizens in this country, it should not be passed in this way,” he said.
What kind of laws are those? Hanna Burava tries to respond.
“There have been many laws that we passed in the two readings…There was one today, but I don’t really remember… It was something about administrative something…about amendments to the law on something… associated with fishing and eh-eh…I think it was also passed in two readings at once”, Burava told the European Radio for Belarus.
Mecyslau Hryb also failed to recall the passing of laws in two readings at once, but not because they were too many.
“There were such cases, but it was extremely rarely. They were those simple laws that did not require a lot of time when everybody realized that there was no other way out rather than to pass it speedily,” he said.
The government started drafting the legislation on cutting social benefits as far back as in 2003. But it was tabled to MPs for consideration just recently, possibly after the president pushed the draft himself and asked the parliament to pass this bill as a priority and without delays.
That’s precisely what they did. Lawmakers passed the bill without any questions. The questions remained outside the parliament’s building. The most acute questions – when will the president sign the decree? Who will be the recipient of targeted assistance? – still remain unanswered.
