changes into the acting Constitution of the Republic of Belarus, which provide for early termination of the plenary powers of the Supreme Soviet by President of the Republic of Belarus in the case of systematical or gross violations of the Constitution? Results Reactions Domestic The opposition questioned the validity of the 1995 referendum itself. According to Siarhei Navumchyk, former parliament member, the referendum was illegal and thus its results have no legal power: According to the 1995 Law on national referendums (Закон аб усенародным галасаванні (рэферэндуме)), the national symbols and official language were not allowed to be questioned on a referendum at all; Formalities of approval of the referendum by the Parliament have not been carried out; The opposition had limited access to media, observers from the opposition have reported fraud in vote counts. The opposition raised several other issues related to organisation of the referendum: The referendum was preceded by a heavy campaign in the overwhelmingly state-owned media that stressed the fact that the then current emblem was used by Nazi collaborators (Belarusian Central Council) during the Great Patriotic War. For example, the first leader of the post-Soviet Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, in an interview mentioned that Pahonia was portrayed by the state-owned media then as a "fascist symbol". Before the final announcement of the results of the referendum, Lukashenko's Chief of Administration Ivan Titenkov personally hoisted down the old flag from the Palace of Government and shredded it in public. The referendum question was formulated in a vague way: a number of people claimed to have voted in the belief that the "new" symbols were the ones already introduced in 1991 The number of voters who approved the symbols, as only 48.6% of the total electorate approved of the new emblem, since over a third of the eligible voters did not express an opinion. Some claim that this failure to win a majority is a violation of the Constitution, but the imperfection and incompleteness of the Belarusian Law did not resolve the issue (in particular, the Constitution does not define the acceptance threshold). Finally, the BPF Party and other influential opposition parties state that the referendum, followed by mass closing of Belarusian language schools and minimizing of Belarusian language programmes on national TV and radio, has had a harmful effect on the Belarusian language and culture. According to Mikhail Pastukhov, a former judge of the Constitutional Court of Belarus,