BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

04/06/2007

The self-dividing Belarusian opposition

Andras Racz, Hungarian Institute of International Affairs: The second congress of the United Democratic Forces (UDF) held on 26-27th May in Minsk replaced Alexander Milinkevich, the former jointly supported presidential candidate. Leadership of the UDF will be exercised by a Political Council directed by a Praesidium of four co-presidents. The new strategy of the UDF is in favor of starting negotiations with the Lukashenko-regime. Milinkevich quit the group and keeps on pursuing his own opposition policies, based on a bottom-up approach, mass support and street demonstrations.

Andras Racz:
Hungarian Institute of International Affairs

The self-dividing Belarusian opposition

The second congress of the United Democratic Forces (UDF) held on 26-27th May in Minsk replaced Alexander Milinkevich, the former jointly supported presidential candidate. Leadership of the UDF will be exercised by a Political Council directed by a Praesidium of four co-presidents. The new strategy of the UDF is in favor of starting negotiations with the Lukashenko-regime. Milinkevich quit the group and keeps on pursuing his own opposition policies, based on a bottom-up approach, mass support and street demonstrations.

Introduction: the presidential election in March 2006

The second congress of the United Democratic Forces took place in Minsk on 26-27th March 2007. The essential question was whether the mandate of the jointly supported opposition presidential candidate, Alexander Milinkevich, elected in October 2005, would be extended. The opposition forces then decided to elect a sole leader in order to have a collectively supported candidate, who would challenge the incumbent president, the authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko, on the March 2006 presidential election. Finally, not all opposition candidates stepped down in favor of Milinkevich, though this did not influence the outcome. According to the official result, Lukashenko won by receiving 82,6% of the votes. The outcome of the election, which was accompanied by frauds, arrests and other unlawful acts, was recognized to be democratic only by Russia, Iran and Syria. However, one has to add that it is most likely that the President would have been able to win even without the misuse of power at all, as the social stability and the relatively high living standards grant the support of the majority of the population.

From the perspective of the opposition, the election could still be considered a success. Even Milinkevich declared many times that their objective was not to defeat Lukashenko, but to demonstrate the power of the opposition and to weaken the regime. After the voting was over, thus from the night of 19th March 2006, almost ten thousand people were demonstrating in Minsk, demanding fair and democratic elections - demonstrations of such size have not taken place since the existence of the Lukashenko-regime. A few hundred activists remained at the Oktyabrskaya square even until 24th March, when finally the riot police cleared up the demonstration. Though hoping for a new 'colorful revolution' was not realistic at all, even the fact that the attention of the international public could be turned to Belarus for a few days was a great achievement.

Emerging internal divisions

After the election and the following approximately one month-long 'retaliation' period was over, the opposition gradually lost momentum and the internal dividing lines started to appear. The United Democratic Forces is indeed a quite heterogenic organization, composed of four great parties and numerous smaller movements. The Belarusian National Front, led by Vintsuk Vyachorka uses a moderately nationalistic, anti-Russian rhetoric, supports the market economy reforms and the opening-up towards Europe. The values represented by the United Civic Party are rather close to the principles of the Western-European liberal parties, while the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party (another name of it is Narodnaya Hramada) has a moderate leftist program. The leftist extreme of the political spectrum is represented by the Party of Communists of Belarus, led by Sergey Kalyakin. This rather pro-Russian party shares the values of the other opposition parties mostly only in the field of having an anti-Lukashenko attitude.

Since the summer of 2006, the opposition has been hardly able to achieve any significant change, while the regime has became even more repressive. An important element of this is that among the growing tensions with Russia, Lukashenko could not afford the democratic opposition to regain its strength. Milinkevich visited the capitals of Europe in vane, as the Polish, Czech, Slovak and Lithuanian support was not enough to persuade the great powers of Europe to stand side with the Belarusian opposition.

At the same time among the organizations of the UDF such opinions has become stronger, according to which the policy pursued by Milinkevich was not suitable either for removing nor for reforming the regime. This branch was led by the chairman of the United Civic Party Anatol Lebedko, who finished only with a few votes behind Milinkevich on the first UDF congress, held in October 2005. The relation between the two politicians had never been too warm and become even worse due to the results of the January 2007 local elections, when the opposition candidates were defeated by the regime all over Belarus. Of course, no one had hopes in a victorious takeover, but the opposition expected a bit better result than obtained.

Already since autumn 2006, Lebedko has been in favor of summoning the congress of the United Democratic Forces again and reconsidering the ways of the struggle against the regime. Even at this time, he mentioned more or less openly the possibility of removing Milinkevich, but organizing and conducting the spring demonstrations (25th March: anniversary of the independent Republic of Belarus established in 1917, 26th April: Chernobyl memorial day) caused a few months of delay. An opposition congress was held on 21-22nd March, but Milinkevich did not participate, stating that he wanted to base his policy on the support of the people and not on party structures.

During spring, it become clear that the Lukasenko-regime was not going to collapse because of the quite serious economic hardships following the December-January debates over the oil and gas price. Moreover, even the gradual, Western-oriented economic opening-up policy of Minsk has not got to fulfill such conditions, which would require the serious transformation of the system - which can be tracked back to the cautious approach of the European Union, being concerned about its relations with Russia. These altogether led to the gathering of the 26-27th May opposition congress, which was preceded by a number of smaller opposition preparation meetings both in Minsk and in the regions.

The second congress of the United Democratic Forces (26-27th May 2007)

In his opening speech, Milinkevich acknowledged that the opposition has been in crisis, but warned against the division of opposition forces, which would result in further weakening. However, the more than 600 delegates present voted for the removal of Milinkevich. Leadership was given to the newly established Political Council with a four-member Prasesidium on the top. It is composed of the leaders of the four great opposition parties: Lebedko, Kalyakin, Vyachorka and the president of the Social-Democrats Anatol Lavkovich. Presidency will be exercised in a half-year rotation.

The congress also voted for starting compromise-seeking negotiations with the regime, in order to conduct the necessary economic reforms without endangering social stability. They suggested the gathering of a National Roundtable, in which the current regime would participate at the highest level - according to the opinion of the congress, this in itself would be the first step of the democratization. For all these, the Congress set the release of all political prisoners as a condition. From the four leading parties, only a prominent politician of the Social Democrats, Mikola Statkevich criticized the resolutions and suggested the adoption of a more active strategy being closer to the European values. Though Pavel Severyanets, a well-known activist of the youth organization Young Front (Molodoy Front) joined him, these suggestions were finally not put on voting.

Besides, the Congress adopted the so-called 'Small Constitution', a concept elaborated mainly by the United Civic Party, describing the fundaments of a new, democratic parliamentary-presidential political system, but not revealing the exact ways of implementation. Another accepted plan, entitled Economic Platform, discusses the necessary economics reforms.

Milinkevich did not accept the fifth position in the Preasidium offered to him and decided to quit the organization. He declared that by leading the newly founded 'For Freedom!' (Za Svabodu!) movement, he intends to continue his earlier bottom-up opposition policy, based on the support of the Belarusian people. Obviously, he will not act against the United Democratic Forces, but will use different approach and methods in the future.

Evaluation

Due to the original heterogeneity and their internal division it is hard to expect that the removal of Milinkevich would decisively improve the efficiency of the politics pursued by the United Democratic Forces. On the contrary, the future dissolution is almost 'coded in' this leadership based on four vice-presidents, especially as even on the distribution of powers and competencies only the next congress is supposed to decide. In this system, the strongest players are Lebedko and Kalyakin, while Lyavkovich leading the Social Democrats is comparatively lightweight.

It is worth considering that according to some expert opinions, now Kalyakin is the one who pursues a policy motivated by Moscow, since Alexander Kazulin, who refused to resign in favor of Milinkevich before the March 2006 election and was said to be possibly acting according to Russian interests, has been imprisoned. Though regarding the situation in Belarus, one cannot speak about a unified Russian position, this does not relieve the concern that the democratic commitment of Kalyakin and of his Communists is at least questionable. Such a dichotomy is a general characteristic of the Belarusian opposition: being against Lukashenko does not make one to be automatically the supporter of a democratic transition. In other words, in case of Belarus the terms oppositionist and democrat are not necessarily synonymic ones.

In the short and middle term, the clear winner of the changes is the Lukashenko-regime. The democratic opposition, which had been previously more of less unified, divided itself and made its most emblematic leader, Milinkevich, enjoying also widespread Western support, quit the organization. Moreover, the compromise-seeking intentions of the new UDF leadership might give such an opportunity to the regime that by infinitely prolonging the negotiations with the opposition, the democratic iamge could be maintained. At the same time, due to the internal divisions of the opposition, a strong, unified action from their side is highly improbable. In addition to this, the roundtable negotiations will supposedly help to regulate the social tensions, which will be induced by the unavoidable economic corrections. This logically leads to the question whether the results of the congress could be interpreted as - following the Russian example - the Lukashenko regime has just 'built up' an opposition suitable for itself.

In the long run, the situation is more doubtful, as it is quite hard to define who will receive the backing of the people having an anti-regime attitude. There are signs showing that for the average Belarusian oppositionists, being dissatisfied with the current regime, but not following closely the internal debates of the various parties, Milinkevich is still the sole credible leader. Such tendencies were visible last time, during the demonstrations held in March-April, when Milinkevich - and to a smaller extent Vyachorka - was the only opposition leader being actually visible on the streets. Supposedly, the strategy of the newly established 'Za Svabodu!' movement will be also based on this. Immediately after the congress, Milinkevich started to organize a popular campaign in support of four activists of Young Front being trialed. This might also be interpreted as a step made in order to widen his camp of sympathizers. All in all, one cannot exclude that on the long run the position of Milinkevich will become stronger, as the new movement might be able to conduct more effective, more unified actions than the United Democratic Forces.

From the perspective of the European Union and for the democratic West in general, the main challenge of the situation is to know whom to support? Due to his removal, Milinkevich, the previously favored, widely recognized opposition candidate seems to lose his democratic legitimization. However, the newly elected leadership of the United Democratic Forces appears to turn to such a direction which contradicts the policy, pursued both by the European Union and the United States, of refusing the top leaders of the Lukashenko regime as negotiating partners. To this question, all EU member states concerned about the fate of Belarus need to give a coherent answer.

Source:

http://eurojournal.org/more.php?id=231_0_1_0_M8