Edit: By “overthrow” I mean an actual attempt to topple the government, not wandering around aimlessly in a building for 4 hours stealing furniture.
If you actually oppose power you would almost certainly be FBI’d long before you could ever get to a position where you could conceivably stage a coup.
Being barred from election is a very quaint punishment for leading a failed coup.
Our democratic banning of an opposition leader from eligibility vs their antidemocratic banning of an opposition leader from eligibility
Funny because US presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution, have always had it, but when other countries set their laws up the same way it’s dystopian.
Ah but have you considered when the US does it, it’s democratic?
In my country, the constitution explicitly makes the monarch immune from any kind of criminal prosecution whatsoever. A still-valid part of the 17th century constitution for the then absolute monarchy excempts “princes of the blood” from being prosecuted before any court but the monarch personally, leading to such absurdities as the current heir apparent having received speeding tickets from his mom, the queen.
As for the actual day to day rulers, the elected politicians and government ministers, they are immune to criminal prosecution unless a majority in parliament decides to allow the prosecution. If government ministers are too be made responsible for anything they do as ministers, this has to happen before a special court of impeachment staffed by political appointees and charges can only be raised by a majority in parliament. As a result, only two ministers has been brought to justice on this side of WWII. Instead, an absurd system of “not even slaps on the wrist” are used to “punish” crimes committed in office. This “punishment” is called a “nose” and literally consists of nothing more than a parliamentary committee passing a resolution to “raise critique” of a minister. The media treats this parish of accountability as big as really big and important news.
But yeah, the rulers of BadCountry™ are not accountable before the law and I should be very concerned about this.
nah we don’t need to support this one. no one should have the power to give themselves legal immunity.
While I agree with you that there is no need to support Lukashenko uncritically, the crucial context that both you and the outraged west are missing that such immunities are pretty much standard in in most western and liberal countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_immunity#Immunity_of_government_leaders
parliamentary immunity being a bad idea that western nations do doesn’t mean everybody else should do it too. It just means the critique shouldn’t come from the state department.
i’d also be very surprised if they didn’t already have a basic version of it, but i’m not a belarussian lawyer
It means that being selectively outraged that he’s doing it is pointless. Why only get worked up over a systemic problem as soon as it’s done by enemies of the western NATO aligned consensus?
i’m against it here too, but it only usually comes up when we’re talking about holding police accountable within the liberal system.
Political leaders are not police officers
analogies aren’t literal
I think political leaders and police officers are very distinct things and bad analogies
shut up nerd
😠
pee pee poo poo
Yeah but what he’s doing here doesn’t seem any more unique than existing laws in any country.
the lifelong parliament seat is kinda different and pretty wack
a bit too pinochety
Still, it is not that different from British life peers or Italian senators for life, institutions that are never covered in this way by the media outlets who are now clutching their pearls over Lukashenko.
Life peers have the closest thing to no political power at all. The Lord’s only purpose these days is to delay legislation and force review of bills.
i simply take it for granted that no state is worthy of support. Having done so, I can proceed to adequately criticize the propaganda my own government feeds me about other governments.
in the civilized west we simply have the current porky-in-chief pardon the previous porky-in-chief
Jan. 6th fascists barely prosecuted…
No one is immune to propagandathe lawNixon went to prison /s
no, in the US we don’t need to do this because the next guy just says “we tortured some folks” and we move on.
Inventing a computer virus that zaps liberals every time they use the word “authoritarian”.
Aren’t all world leaders essentially barred from criminal prosecution while sitting? Does this extend to after the term of a Belarus leader at all?
