New Election Cycle Starts Without Sensations

In fact, the second round has been nearly unnoticeable. Since everything was already decided after the first round on March 2, public attention to the second round was more or less insignificant. Still, the opposition has not missed a chance to make several noteworthy statements. In particular, the United Civic Party expressed indignation at the fact that the second round at two constituencies in Minsk, including one where the party had its candidate, were scheduled for workdays. According to the party's leaders, the authorities wanted to foil the runoff by preventing the voter turnout from reaching the 25-percent threshold. However, a quorum was reached in all constituencies in the capital city. According to the central election commission, the average voter turnout in Minsk was 38.2 percent, but the candidate nominated by the United Civic Party lost anyway. Incidentally, making it to the second round is the best result for an opposition candidate in Minsk. The city council - a strategic area for the executive authorities - consists entirely of people loyal to the regime. Still, the opposition had a number of victories in the countryside in both rounds. Twenty-two representatives of political parties won seats in local councils after the second round. The Communist Party of Belarus (the pro-government one) got 5 seats, Belarusian Party of Communists - 6, United Civic Party and Belarusian Social Democratic Party "Narodnaya Hramada" - 4 each, Belarusian Patriotic Party (also loyal to the government), Belarusian Labor Party and Belarusian Popular Front won 1 seat each. A total of 257 party nominees were elected to local councils after the two rounds, according to Mikalaj Lazavik, secretary of the central election commission. Nominees of the pro-government Communist Party of Belarus won the largest number of seats in soviets, 107. Candidates fielded by the opposition Belarusian Party of Communists won 78 seats and those fielded by the pro-government Agrarian Party 39 seats. Elected to soviets were eight nominees of the Belarusian Popular Front, eight of the United Civic Party, six of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party "Narodnaya Hramada," five of the Liberal Democratic Party, three of the Belarusian Patriotic Party, and one of each of the Belarusian Social Sports Party, the Belarusian Party of Labor and the Belarusian Women's Party "Nadzeya."

Thus, all the party representatives together account for just 1.1 percent of the total number of council members.

Interesting enough, the opposition parties have somewhat different statistics concerning the number of their people who won seats in local councils. Their figures are two times higher than those announced officially by the central election commission. For instance, the United Civic Party says that it has 13 people in local councils, while the Belarusian Popular Front claims to have 18 local councilors. The fact is that some people close to those organizations ran as independent candidates. But the parties provided supported to them during the election campaign. Such "secret players" received their party-membership cards only after the elections.

Branding the elections as undemocratic, the opposition, nevertheless, is speaking about its undoubted success and growing trend among voters to choose opponents of the government. Still, analysts believe that the opposition is just trying to make the best of a bad job.

The fact that the second round has not change anything in the general picture of the elections can be proved by some more statistics. Just 194 people were elected after the runoff round. A total of 23,469 local council members, or 97.98 percent of the 24,010 seats in local councils, were elected. A quorum was reached in all the 1,672 local soviets in the country as a result of the two election rounds. Thus, the local authorities can hardly organize additional elections to fill the vacant seats. The executive government will treat that minor matter at its discretion.

As for other election-related statistics, a total of 5,214 thousand voters, or 73.4 percent of those on the voter register, cast their ballots. As many as 20.7 percent voted early. The lack of transparency in the procedure of early voting gives the opposition grounds to say that 20 percent of votes might have been rigged.

Women account for 44.4 percent of the newly elected deputies, people aged below 30 for 7.15 percent, agricultural employees for 34.85 percent, educators, researchers and cultural workers for 19.06 percent, government officials for 14.82 percent, industrial, communications and transport workers for 12.48 percent, social security and healthcare workers for eight percent, unemployed persons for 2.2 percent, and businesspeople for 0.75 percent.

So, this is the choice of the Belarusian people, according to the official statistics. Anyway, there are a lot of doubts as to whether the newly elected people will be able to handle local issues efficiently, because Belarus cannot boast a working local self-government system yet.