Electoral Blow for Opposition (IWPR)

2003-03-18

By Alexei Chubat in Minsk, for IWPR in London, 18 March 2003

For the first time in five year, the opposition participated in local elections earlier this month, but their hopes of gaining more influence over domestic politics came to naught. They failed to win significant numbers of votes, putting the poor performance down to electoral fraud.

For the first time in five year, the opposition participated in local elections earlier this month, but their hopes of gaining more influence over domestic politics came to naught. They failed to win significant numbers of votes, putting the poor performance down to electoral fraud.

The main opposition parties had demanded several amendments to the electoral code as a condition for participating in the 1999 local councils elections and the 2000 parliamentary ballot. When the amendments were not made they boycotted the polls, hoping they would thereby undermine their legitimacy in the eyes of the international community and draw attention to the political situation in Belarus.

However, by 2003 the parties decided to adopt a different strategy. "The majority of parties have abandoned the boycotting tactic because it was ineffective," said Andrei Dmitriev, deputy head of the Minsk council of the United Civil Party, UCP. "Boycotts could have a negative effect on the Belarusian people, they could start to think that it really is impossible to change anything," added Alexei Yanukevich of the Belarusian National Front, BNF.

Indeed, many political experts regard the opposition as totally ineffective. Although a survey by the Independent Institute of Socio-economic and Political Studies showed that the number of President Lukashenko's opponents has recently doubled, support for the opposition parties has not increased accordingly. Their popularity ratings remain low, with the NOVAK Statistics Laboratory rating the Belarusian Social Democratic Party, BSDP, as the most popular with 4.7 per cent support.

"The opposition are weak, they don't have a clear leader and they seem incapable of doing anything," said Sergei Sasunkevich, a 23-year-old unemployed man from Vileika, in the Minsk region. "We don't feel their presence on the ground at all."

The local elections two weeks ago underlined the opposition's lack of impact. None of its candidates were elected to the Minsk Council of Deputies and out of a total of 23,286 available deputy mandates, the BNF and BSDP won 11 each and the UCP got only five, according to the central electoral commission. Only the Belarusian Communist Party made significant gains - they now have 120 local deputies.

Many commentators believe that the entire approach of the opposition is responsible for their electoral failures. "They are cut off from the people and are playing in their own sandpit, more like clubs than parties," said political analyst Vladimir Rovdo.

"Many of the leaders have been in politics for over 10 years, but haven't done anything worthwhile - all they do is fight amongst themselves," said Igor Baslyk, a parliamentary deputy and member of the Respublika grouping. "All their policies rely heavily on stories about how badly we live," he said.

The opposition parties themselves insist their poor showing is purely the result of electoral fraud. "The violations were shocking," said Andrei Dmitriev of UCP, who participated in one of the pre-election campaigns.

Dmitriev claims that one candidate, who enjoyed 60 per cent support among the region's voters, was removed from the voting list for bogus reasons two days before the elections. Observers were illegally ejected during ballot counts and voter lists packed with 100-300 extra names at each polling station, he said.

These claims are born out by Klimenty Matyukhov, an observer from the Nasha Stolitsa association, who said he witnessed some violations in Minsk. "There were mistakes in the lists of voters, some people were given several ballot papers each and others received papers without producing the necessary identification," he said. "Electoral commission members ignored the observers' warnings of these violations."

The opposition also criticised a recent decision by the OSCE to invite Belarusian deputies to its parliamentary assembly. "That invitation emboldened the regime to falsify votes, because it regards any concession as a weakness. International observers weren't even invited to attend the polls," said Andrei Dmitriev.

The government, meanwhile, has commended the high quality of work done by electoral commission members. The day after the elections, President Lukashenko thanked commission head Lydia Yermoshina and others involved in the polls. Belarusian citizens had used the elections to express their lack of support for the opposition, he said.

Despite their lack of success, some observers believe that the opposition were right to contest the ballot. "Although the falsification of results was blatant, the opposition parties can only be praised for taking part in the elections," said Rovdo. "Opposition candidates were removed from the slates because their high ratings of up to 28 per cent scared the government."