Parties Demonstrate Their Capacity

2006-02-09

By Valery Karbalevich

There was no doubt that the first two would collect at least 100,000 even before the collection phase actually started. The most intriguing part was the question as to whether the current regime's opponents would be able to unfold their activities. To put that question to a broader context, it was important to understand whether it was still possible to conduct legal political activities in Belarus in the form of mass communication between the opposition and the public. The past month shows that it is still possible.

Moreover, teams of the two opposition candidates who exceeded the ceiling of 100,000 collected even more signatures than five years ago. Domash and Hancharyk got 161,000 and 123,000 signatures, respectively, in 2001. Milinkevich and Kazulin collected 198,000 and 156,000, respectively, according to the central election commission.

Taking into account that political conditions in the country got worse over the past five years and reprisals acquired a larger scale, such performance can be considered a great success. It is also important that unlike in 2001 opposition forces were not diffused among a dozen of candidates but were more focused, which is why the two politicians easily collected the necessary amount of signatures.

And there is also one more important conclusion. In the course of last year, when Lukashenka's opponents had heated debates about a strategy for the following year's presidential election, a number of politicians and political experts expressed rather mean remarks about opposition parties, said that they did not have any public support and pointed out the need for new leaders and organizations. Moreover, they even presented themselves as a third force.

The results of signature collection show that the severely criticized political parties remain the only really live matter in the country, just like five years ago. The consolidation of most opposition forces around Alyaksandr Milinkevich allowed him not only to collect almost 200,000 signatures but also reach a rating of 25 percent in mid-January, according to the Gallup/Baltic Surveys. A certain political success of Kazulin is also largely a result of substantial support from other political forces, the Belarusian Social Democratic Party in his case.

Those politicians who tried to find support outside opposition parties, like Alyaksandr Vaytovich and Valery Fralow, had to give up their aspirations. Numerous attempts to create something different, some sort of a third force, have all ended unsuccessfully. Still, it is a quite different matter as to why those respected people needed to get involved in the election campaign at all. Generally speaking, it is sometimes difficult to understand why Vaytovich or Frolow are doing some thing or another. After the election was officially announced Vaytovich said that he would not take part in it. But some time later he registered his nomination group and started to collect signatures. Then he unexpectedly got out of the campaign and started to call for boycotting the vote. Afterwards he said he supported Zyanon Paznyak's idea of "popular voter." Fralow seems to have been bluffing for quite a long time: he claimed he collected 100,000 signatures. When the time came to show them, it turned out that he got just 58,000. Such zigzags create the impression of their lack of seriousness and political carelessness.

Zyanon Paznyak, a veteran of Belarusian politics, has also shown a number of surprising moves. The upcoming election is the third one for him. Last fall he said that the opposition's participation in parliamentary elections was betrayal, because it allegedly helped legitimize the regime. Now it is quite difficult to understand why the opposition's participation legitimizes the regime in parliamentary but not in presidential elections. Back in 2001 Paznyak's team failed to collect the necessary 100,000 signatures.

This year Paznyak got engaged into the election campaign but said in the very beginning that he was not going to campaign for victory but wanted to convince the public to follow the idea of "popular vote," that is, take official ballot papers home to frustrate the vote and de-legitimize Lukashenka's likely victory. His decision not to give to the central election commission the collected 130,000 signatures (at least according to him) looks rather strange in that respect.

Even if we put aside the question as to how he is going to explain to his supporters that their signatures are not used, his decision does not look reasonable from the viewpoint of his main goal. A full-fledged participation in the election would be much more effective for the implementation of the "popular vote" idea. His party would get some fund from the state for campaigning and also a possibility to communicate with voters freely. Paznyak could then return to Belarus to lead the campaign. He would have the possibility of making two radio and television statements.

Paznyak argues that he would not be registered anyway, because his nomination group got such threats from the central election commission. But there is a big difference between two situations: when the government denies registration to a strong competitor out of fear and when a politician gives up himself without even trying. In the former case there is always a scandal, and it is always good for the unregistered leader. In the latter case there comes suspicion that the nomination group might have not collected the required number of signatures or the leader is trying to find a reason not to return to Belarus.

Few doubt that decisions to register or not to register certain candidates are not going to be legal but political. The ruling team faces a difficult task with many unknown parameters but they have to fit with a foregone result.