Ulad Vialichka: These elections mean nothing for the country

belsat.eu

You can voice any results when you have the ability to actually control the will of the citizens.

  Two representatives of the opposition – Elena Anisim, the deputy chair of the Francišak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society  and a member of the United Civil Party Anna Konopatskaya – became members of the House of Representatives of the 6th convocation.  It is for the first time that opposition candidates have made it to the Belarusian Parliament since 2004.

Independent national monitoring has recorded massive violation of the electoral law and use of administrative resource. Just like in the previous years the electoral process was fully controlled by state. So why has the official Minsk changed its tradition and admitted two opposition candidates to the Parliament?

Ulad Vialichka, Director General of the International Consortium "EuroBelarus" replied to the questions of the “EuroBelarus” Information Service.

- The opposition has won two parliamentary seats out of 110. This is the first time in 12 years. What does it mean?

-  The state has implemented the most likely scenario, which has been predicted both by the analysts, and democratic community. What we see is a show in the form of parliamentary election: it is a demonstration that opposition candidates have the potential to participate in the political process as well. However, all the actions look like an imitation rather than political process: unfortunately, there is no real possibility to state and discuss the will of Belarusians.

 The announced results cause mixed feelings. None of the elite of the opposition was allowed to vote under different pretexts or "obstructions". You can voice any results when you have the ability to actually control the will of the citizens.

The state shows an opportunity for independent candidates to get into the Parliament, but we do not see any prominent figures of the opposition admitted. One of the very significant signs for me is the fact that both the elected deputies are women; you can see that there is a certain continuation of the topic of women in politics, which was actively raised during the last presidential campaign. Both of them are not consolidating political leaders but just average members of their political groups. The state demonstrates a certain willingness to talk with the society, but at the same time it only intends to tolerate such a dialogue, not to really act on it or take the opinion of the democratic part of society into consideration.

It should be noted that the candidate for presidential elections in 2015 Tatiana Karatkevich was not elected to the House of Representatives. It is not reasonable for the authorities to promote anyone who has at least some publicity and support. It is clearly unlike the Belarusian state to demonstrate any continuous political success of the opposition.

Personally I believe that the admission of the two representatives of opposition to parliament is an attempt to fragmentize the opposition - we see a political game, but no real will expression.

The last "election" also has not demonstrated any significant change in the political culture: according to the data that the is already available for the media, there was massive early voting, enforcement of students and military personnel to vote, and ballot rigging during the vote counting process... In a healthy electoral process system any discrepancy is proved by figures, but not in our country. Therefore, it is not that important what opposition members are mentioned among the parliamentary deputies.

- What is the purpose of the two opposition members being admitted to the House of Representatives?

- Two deputies is not one: the state highlights that it is real to become a member of the Parliament. Two deputies – is it a lot? Several messages can be seen in this. The first one is that two people are the utmost of opposition capability or the biggest number that state can afford. The second one, the number of opposition deputies can grow; but how much will it influence the quality of the political process in our country?

- National monitoring stated massive violation of law during the parliamentary election campaign. However, neither Anisim nor Konopatskaya has abandoned their seats. Opposition demonstrates double standards. What are the possible consequences of such an approach?

- I do not think it is about double standards. Rather very different levels and types of expectations from the election campaign are present. We must understand that there are very different attitudes towards parliamentary elections in the independent Belarusian society (civil society, political groups). Some of them see the election campaign as a platform to communicate with the citizens, so it would be unreasonable for them to neglect even two deputy seats.

On the other hand, we have a strong human rights community seeking control over the "rules of the game": it monitors the violations and the failure to abide by these rules even if there were 50 opposition members nominated to the House of Representatives.

There is also a third camp, to which belong many of my civil society colleagues and I. We believe that these elections mean nothing for the country; they lead nowhere and in no way affect neither the present nor the future of Belarus. For the elections to have real power profound state system change must take place. For example, the government should really start a dialogue with dissenters instead of simulating it. The announced election results so far testify the opposite tendency.