Ulad Vialichka: National Platform should become a center of attraction for pro-European forces

The crisis in the Eastern Partnership has affected Belarusan National Platform of the EaP CSF, which is looking for meanings and relevance of its existence.

The crisis in the region, started by Ukrainian events, caused a chain reaction: Eastern Partnership got stuck, which placed Belarusan National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (CSF) indecisive as whether to proceed being useless appendix of the programme or try to become a center of attraction for pro-European forces in Belarus.

Frightened by Ukrainian events, European Union preferred to leave Belarus as the only island of stability and predictability – for its own safety and self-justification. That is why the EU has basically agreed on the terms of the official Minsk and de facto excluded civil society institutions from bilateral relations.

The National Platform, which is linked with the Eastern Partnership, found itself at the crossroads. To decide its future, regular conference will be held in Minsk on June 21.

The challenges which the National Platform is facing, its aims and goals at the conference in the interview with the “EuroBelarus” Information Service discussed Ulad Vialichka, acting leader of the National Platform, the head of the International Consortium “EuroBelarus”.

- Uladzimir Matskevich, the head of the Board of the International Consortium “EuroBelarus” believes that the National Platform now came into a stage of depression. DO you share the viewpoint of your colleague?

- I don’t like this description – depressive. In our case it would be appropriate to speak about the loss of guidelines and goals; whereas depression is typical for people. Depressiveness is seen not only in the work of the National Platform, it is caused by quite complicated situation with the Eastern Partnership, which is the consequence of the latest events in the region.

- How do you assess the situation with the civil society in Belarus?

- Today’s situation with the civil society in Belarus is, perhaps, the worst over more than 20 years of independent Belarus. We are facing a question as to which role should civil society perform in today’s situation, what should it be like and through which changes should it go? There are a lot of things which we could have done, but didn’t do - and reasons for that lie not only in external factors or tough political regime.

But at the same time, I see positive processes, such as restructuring of the civil society in search for meanings of its existence. Today Belarusans don’t believe that civil society can change something. The power of civil society lies in connection between leaders of opinion, civil society leaders and common people, which, unfortunately, most people don’t feel these days. Civil society in Belarus has degraded into a structural segment, into some professional sphere. Basically, by civil society in Belarus today we mean groups of active citizens and certain bright people, who feel the urge to express their civil stand and give assessments to the events.

Unfortunately, the dominant philosophy that our organizations are using in their work is reduced to work for the future which no one really understands.

More than 20 years different public organizations have been championing European values, helping society to focus on Europe. And latest social polls reveal that public opinion has lost its critical point; it follows propagandistic media trends set by Russia.

If we talk about the National Platform, it shares the same flaws with Belarusan civil society. At the stage of EaP active development it was able to perform as an actor that sets certain guidelines; but having refused to broaden the agenda and refusing to extend the frames of the EaP, National Platform became dependent on it. The crisis in the EaP struck the National Platform, too, and activated its stagnation processes. That is why now National Platform is looking for meanings and relevance of its existence.

- National Platform was left outside the European Dialog for Modernization, which, according to Uladzimir Matskevich, is beneficial both for the EU and for the official Minsk. What does this mutual benefit consist of?

- For the last two years we witnessed change in tactics in the relations between the EU and the official Minsk. These relations came to minimization of agenda and exclusion of any interested public parties from the process. Of course, it is in the interests of the Belarusan regime, which is the only party to all communication. Thanks to high-ranking officials for some time we managed to insist on multilateral relations in such dialog.

However, lack of considerable progress in Belarus-Europe bilateral relations (the problem of political prisoners isn’t solved yet) has led to reduction of communication to the technical level. Now the official Minsk can bring up visa liberalization issue and protract it indefinitely, demonstrating “progress” in bilateral relations. But all these are minor problems which don’t result in solutions.

The EU has allowed to be led by official Minsk due to the aggravation of the situation in the region. In comparison with Ukraine, Belarus no longer seemed that problematic. The EU preferred to agree with the existing situation for the sake of apparent quiet. The EU assigns primary importance to safety, stability, and predictability.

Civil society is being divested from European processes. All our attempts to insist on participation in Belarus-Europe relations still have no results. In this case we observe that the interests of official Minsk and EU are synchronized. National Platform is no longer invited to meetings with officials from the European External Action Service. It looks like we stopped being an important partner for Brussels.

We can look for reasons of such policy within ourselves, but I rather think that we should critically consider European officials and EU delegation to Belarus, who by restricting themselves by official contacts with Belarusan authorities made the dialog with the civil society useless.

- On June 21 the Conference of the Belarusian National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society will take place in Minsk. What are its goals and tasks?

- Our working goal is connected with the need to ensure that the National Platform will take part in the Forum in Tbilisi.

Our strategic goal is to define the vector for our future development. We are to answer the question whether the National Platform is ready to get free from the Eastern Partnership or whether it will continue being a useless appendix to the programme. The answer depends on the goals, guidelines and moods of the civil society leaders.

My personal opinion is that for today the National Platform should become a center of consolidation, a center of attraction for pro-European forces, who stand up for European values and see the future of Belarus in Europe.

It is a difficult task as it has no obvious solution. The authorities are playing with Europe; political parties are busy preparing to the pseudo-election 2015. The future of Belarus worries separate people – writers, philosophers, intellectuals, cultural and art workers –than politicians.

- The subject of the conference is: “Belarus in conditions of regional crisis and stagnation of the Eastern Partnership”. Consequently, the modernization of the EaP is the leitmotiv of the conference. How should the EaP be restructured in order to be revived? And is it possible at all?

- From my personal view, it is almost impossible to reform the EaP in its current form, as the crisis and stratification of countries into leaders and outsiders have gone too far. We should talk about a new development program-successor, which would take into account the stratification of the countries-members of the EaP. There are countries which aim at Europe, but there are some who don’t.

It is clear what the EU can give to the countries which aim at Europe – reforms, modernization. But what can the EU suggest to those countries, in which there is no political will for change and reforms? What should civil society do in the countries where the official authorities don’t want modernization and transformation?

It is not only the problem of the civil society; it is Belarus’ problem, too.

P.S. It is a final call for applications for participation in the Conference of the Belarusian National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society, which will take place on June21 in Minsk. The subject of the conference is: “Belarus in conditions of regional crisis and stagnation of the Eastern Partnership”.

The conference can be attended both by the participants of the National Platform who signed the Memorandum on Cooperation, as well as other organizations (without the right for participation). For participation in the conference application should be sent to [email protected]. The deadline is June 16, 2014.

You can find out more about the conference and applications here.