Chairman of central election commission insists that national referendum on November 24 is impossible

1996-10-21 15:00

Minsk, 21 October. The Ministry of Justice has already accumulated 5.5 billion rubels on its special referendum account, nobody knows how these funds are spent, Viktar Hanchar, Chairman of the central election commission, said while speaking at the October 21 plenary meeting of the Supreme Soviet. Commenting on the results of the All-Belarusian People's Assembly, Mr. Hanchar expressed concern about the decision to hold the referendum on November 24. According to him, billions of rubels have already been spent in view of the president's directive to hold the referendum on November 7. To prevent such things later on, Mr. Hanchar called on Parliament to immediately consider the possibility of postponement of the referendum to December at the very least. In his opinion, the situation was complicated by Syamyon Sharetski's appeal to the Constitutional Court for an examination of the constitutionality of the Supreme Soviet's September 6 Resolution on the Conducting of a National Referendum and Measures for Its Organization. Under legislation, the Constitutional Court is to take a decision on that appeal within the following ten days, i.e. no earlier than November 2. But the central election commission is to hold its last session on October 31 to make final decisions related to the referendum. In this regard Mr. Hanchar called on the chairmen of the Supreme Soviet and the Constitutional Court to "do everything possible and impossible" so that the parliamentary chairman's appeal will be considered this week.
MP Ivan Pashkevich, proposed that the agenda of the parliamentary session should be supplemented with consideration of the results of the All-Belarusian People's Assembly, explaining his proposal by the need to divide the referendum on the questions proposed by both the president and Parliament into two ones. Mr. Sharetski refused to put this proposal to a vote since no official documents of the Assembly were presented.