Party Theatrics for Political Process
Yury Chausov

Summary

The year 2010 could have witnessed the peak of party activity in the Belarusian political field. It was a “big political year” with two election campaigns conducted in line with reformed election regulations, envisaging, among others, additional opportunities for political parties. However, the local elections failed to become a significant event due to limited party engagement. Anyway, parties viewed those elections as a drill before the presidential election campaign. However, during the presidential campaign itself, non-party candidates took the lead. They regarded parties as containers with human and organizational resources up for grabs. This balance of forces between party and non-party opposition agents was mostly due to centrifugal trends in the opposition and actual break-up of the United Democratic Forces (UDF) coalition.
The organizational fragmentation of opposition structures and conflicts among parties were to a large degree predetermined by the progress in learning the lessons of the previous presidential election of 2006, when the interests of the personified democratic leader collided with the interests of the general opposition coalition. That structural conflict was further complicated by disagreements over strategies: opposition entities advocating a milder regime for Belarus and its geopolitical redirection towards the European Union are accused of compliance and opportunism by uncompromising opposition agents campaigning against any dialogue with the regime, denying the possibility of its evolutionary transformation and using revolutionary rhetoric. Both structural and strategic discrepancies have remained in party interactions since the 2006 election, although the severer policy adopted by the regime recently had promoted a nominal association of opposition forces.

Tendencies:

• Opposition political parties’ engagement in the presidential election was determined by the need to retain their political identity in a situation where non-party centers accumulating resources and influence have taken on leading roles in the opposition system;
• Amendments to election regulations in early 2010 offered political parties more powers in the organization of the election process, hence additional efforts of the parties supporting the current political regime to nominate their representatives in election commissions and teams of election observers;
• The largest pro-governmental public association Belaya Rus redoubled its efforts to perform the functional role of a pro-presidential party that would become an efficient mechanism to ensure public support for the current regime;
• Centrifugal trends in opposition parties had reached their peak by mid-2010, when a few parties that formally make part of a single coalition nominated their candidates for the presidency, whereas a single party could have representatives of a few initiative groups supporting various candidates;
• After the presidential election and the dramatic escalation of political repression that followed, the centrifugal trends in opposition structures were replaced by a tendency towards convergence with a view to resolving the common task of resisting further crackdown;
• Disagreements between the groups advocating dialogue with the authorities and warring opposition determined the nature of the interaction among parties during the presidential campaign and remained unresolved after the presidential campaign had been completed.

Legal climate for parties’ activities

As of January 1, 2011, there were 15 political parties in Belarus and 976 registered local party organizations.
In 2010, 274 new party organizations were registered, 15 times as many as in 2009, when only 18 new organizations were registered. The substantial number of new registrations did not result in an overall increase in the number of party branches, though. On the contrary, the number has been falling from year to year. It appears that the impressive increase in the number of newly registered party organizations was exclusively in the domain of pro-governmental parties, whereas the number of offices of opposition parties dropped correspondingly, as they were struck off registers.
Structures of opposition parties are most frequently liquidated under the traditional pretext that they have no legal address (or their address is revoked), mostly for economic reasons and because of total state control of the real estate market.

One example of the use of the legal address leverage to exercise pressure on opposition political parties was the revocation of the Belarusian Popular Front Party (BPFP)’s right to lease the premises that the party had rented for over 20 years. The headquarters of the party used to be the center of activity free from the interference of the authorities in downtown Minsk: the premises were used to host not only the events of the party itself, but also congresses of other political parties, expositions, concerts and press conferences. After the mass arrests of December 19-20, the party headquarters became the center for raising money and providing other kind of support for the detained activists and their families. Therefore, the letter the BPFP received on December 29 from the proprietor of the premises (local authorities) with a demand to vacate the office starting April 1, 2011 should be considered a punishment for the solidarity campaign. If the party fails to defend its right to lease the premises in a court of law in spring, the oldest political party of the country will be faced with a threat of losing its legal address and, consequently, the status of a registered organization.
Since the regulatory framework for the creation of new political parties in Belarus remains very tight, the liberalization of social and political life in the country prior to and during the presidential election did not result in registrations of any new parties. A new attempt to register the Belarusian Christian Democracy (BCD) (its fifth overall attempt as an organization and third as a political party) failed. The Justice Ministry said the BCD had provided inaccurate information about the founders of the organization, including forged documents, while the initiators were said to have violated the generally accepted procedure of establishing a political party. Based on questioning of the founders and a probe into documents submitted for registration, the Justice Ministry on October 25 decided to turn down the application for registration. In November 2010, the Justice Ministry denied the application for registration filed by the Belarusian Communist Party of Workers, led by Leonid Shkolnikov. That new party was a joint effort of former members of the Party of Communists Belorusskaya (PCB) who firmly opposed the renaming of PCB into the Party Fair World and its withdrawal from the Marxist-Leninist ideology.
During the election campaign, the authorities never lessened control and rigid regulation of the activity of political parties, despite the fact that the limited liberalization period was not over. For instance, the Justice Ministry refused to recognize the extraordinary XIII congress of the BPFP as legitimate and declared its decisions void (the congress made the decision to nominate the deputy chairman of the party as a presidential candidate). It is noteworthy that when announcing its decision not to recognize the results of the congress, the Ministry cited complaints and reports that it received from the party members who represented the previous generation of the party leadership, which was replaced during the previous BPFP congress in 2009. Because of the gross violations of the charter of the party and legislation of the Republic of Belarus during the preparation and conduct of the extraordinary XIII congress, the Justice Ministry on July 2, 2010 officially warned the party.
It was the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party (Hramada) that was faced with the most severe interference of the Justice Ministry, though. The latest congress of the BSDP(H) that took place on October 10, 2010, was also declared illegitimate because of major violations of the party charter and legislation of the country. The registering authority therefore did not acknowledge the powers of Anatoly Sidorevich, who superseded Anatoly Levkovich as chairman. The latter did not recognize his dismissal as party leader and further expulsion, though, and, just the way it happened with the BPFP, the previous leadership of the BSDP(H) chose to cooperate with the registering authority seeking to have the powers of the new leadership officially nullified. The party has been proposed to prepare and hold a repeated XIII congress of the BSDP(H) and received a warning letter, while consultations with the Justice Ministry over ways to overcome the legal deadlock were conducted with the previous party administration. It was the Ministry that made the choice of the legitimate leader based on its own vision of the problem and political reasons.
The amendments to the legislation on political parties in early 2010 were advertized by the current regime as major improvements in the legal environment for parties. Specifically, the newly effective Special Part of the Tax Code reduced the rate of duties for registration of parties, their branches and amendments to charters. At the same time, the amendments to the law on political parties, which came into effect on January 4, 2010 left the legal procedure of party registration unaffected. On the contrary, the law allowed arbitrary registration denials based on minor and easily rectifiable defects (for instance, mistakes in paperwork). The law officially formalized the limitations that had been often resorted to in actual practice long before the amendments came into effect. The official ban on financing of political parties and party unions from the republican and/or local budgets was a novelty.
The reform of the election regulations and their implementation during the local councils election campaign (April 25, 2010) and the presidential election campaign (December 19, 2010) became essential for the development of the Belarusian party system. The new version of the Electoral Code dated January 4, 2010 enhanced the role of political parties during the preparation and conduct of elections. Specifically, the Code introduced quotas for representatives of parties and other public associations in election commissions, whereas the numbers of state officials in commissions were to be limited. The procedure of nominating candidates for deputy by parties and initiative groups was simplified, and the same holds for canvassing. The document identified legal reasons for collection of donations to finance election campaigns.
However, in practice the role of parties in organizing elections remained virtually unchanged: the quotas in election commissions were mostly filled by representatives of pro-governmental public associations and trade unions. The number of representatives of parties supporting the authorities (the Social and Sports Party, Republican Labor and Justice Party, etc.) also increased, albeit to a lesser degree. As for opposition parties, their representation in election commissions did not increase much. The remarkable fact is that nearly all representatives of pro-governmental parties were included in commissions, whereas most of the nominees of opposition political parties, as before, faced denials.

Coalition building

Opposition political parties entered the year 2010 in two coalitions, which positioned themselves as the main representatives of the opposition before the presidential campaign. The United Democratic Forces (UDF) still strove for the leading role in the coming election, its key players being the United Civic Party (UCP), Belarusian Party of the Left Fair World, Belarusian Social-Democratic Hramada and some other organizations. These ambitions were not realized in 2010, because neither during the local nor the presidential election the coalition managed to act as an integral entity, although progress was made in coordinating activities.
The UDF’s influence as a center that formulated strategic approaches for the Belarusian opposition was quite significant in the country’s political landscape. Specifically, on January 24, 2010, the political council of the coalition convened for the first time in a very long time to adopt amendments to the UDF strategy passed at the VII Congress of Democratic Forces in 2007. The changes were aimed at working out a harder position of democratic forces on the dialogue with the authorities, polarizing resisting groups in the opposition and transmitting the bipolar picture of Belarusian political life (the regime vs. the opposition). That strategy for polarization and placing emphasis on social rift later became a starting point for few presidential election campaigns: most of the candidates dismissed it and built their election platform on its negation. However, some politicians employed that approach as a strategy for the post-election period, when political repressions made it clear that the struggle against the authoritarian regime had no room for compromise.
In the first half of 2010, the Belarusian Independence Bloc (BIB) contended for the role of the gravitation center consolidating national democratic forces. The coalition was formed in late 2009 by the BPFP, the For Freedom movement, the Belarusian Christian Democracy and a few other minor organizations. The association was perceived as the core of the future election campaign of Alexandr Milinkevich after his second nomination as a presidential candidate. However, in May-June 2010, BCD representatives blocked the procedure of nomination of a single candidate by the coalition. By that time, the opposition structures forming the BIB had already announced nomination of their own candidates for the presidency, while Milinkevich, the leader of the For Freedom movement, was considered an obvious favorite of any initiative to nominate a single candidate of the bloc. The BCD yet again claimed it would be involved in the nomination process only if its representative was officially appointed as the head of the election headquarters and the initiative group of the single candidate. As a result, the bloc as good as suspended its activity in June 2010, and a few weeks later, the leader of the For Freedom movement gave up his nomination plans. By that time, non-party candidates representing Speak the Truth! and Charter-97 initiatives had assumed leading positions in the Belarusian opposition alongside representatives of the UCP, which is part of the UDF.
To save their faces, the national democratic forces announced the creation of the Belarusian Choice initiative after the presidential election campaign had officially started. The foundation agreement was signed by chairman of the Belarusian Zelenye (Green) Party Oleg Novikov, leader of For Modernization Union Ales Mikhalevich, BPFP nominee Grigory Kostusyov, For Freedom movement leader Alexandr Milinkevich and BPFP  chairman Alexey Yanukevich. The new coalition was founded on the idea of protection of state independence of Belarus and a policy towards changing the political regime. The political initiative was in fact an attempt to put a good face on things. After the presidential election, the coalition has provided a platform to coordinate joint actions of national democratic forces.
Importantly, not a single inter-party coalition played an independent role during the presidential campaign itself, mostly because of the loss of trust in the UDF and its almost complete dissolution in late 2009. Most of senior UDF executives were engaged in the Speak the Truth! campaign (representatives of Fair World and the UCP). The strategic approach of some of the former leaders of the BPFP, which supported the UCP strategy, to a large extent predetermined the ideological foundation of Andrey Sannikov’s campaign.
After the election, nearly all opposition parties became involved in the new consolidating body – the National coordinating center of democratic opposition, which articulated the position of the “united opposition” amid unfolding repression.

Participation in elections

Opposition parties did not regard the elections to local councils of deputies of April 25, 2010 as a significant event. The parties that are commonly considered democratic in Belarus were mostly interested in assessing the adjustments in the process of organizing the elections in accordance with the newly adopted electoral legislation. The opposition political community prioritized the possibility for opposition representatives to be included in election commissions, emphasis being placed on district election commissions. The true objective of Belarusian democratic forces was not to get a certain number of mandates, but have party nominees included in election commissions. Judging by the real numbers, opposition parties admitted that their experience of taking part in local elections was negative: the number of opposition representatives in district commissions increased only slightly, to around 0.1% of the total number of commission members.
A total of 25,033 candidates strove for 21,301 mandates of deputies of local councils, around 1.17 candidates per mandate, but less than ten opposition representatives – all of them from the BCD and Fair World – got the coveted cards.
Therefore, the changes that the opposition took so many years to fight for and that were finally included in the Electoral Code through consolidated efforts of Belarusian opposition groups and the OSCE ODIHR, had no impact whatsoever on the essence of the election process. Legal fetishism played a bad trick on opposition parties: after years of seeking amendments to electoral regulations, the two election campaigns of 2010 made it absolutely clear that not everything depends on laws in the political legal process.
The parties regarded the elections to local councils as a dress rehearsal for the presidential election campaign; however, party nominees played a minor role during the presidential campaign compared to non-party candidates. The Belarusian political field had reached such a high degree of atomization that entities that used to be secondary were now showing ambition and planning their own political game using their own resources. One of the chief newsmakers of the presidential campaign was the Speak the Truth! initiative inaugurated in February 2010. Charter-97, the coordinating center of a broad range of political forces, had been preparing its own leader under the European Belarus plaque, in order to bypass the traditional party mechanisms of identifying the leader.
The named structures were the centers of accumulation of financial and other resources; therefore, they can be called “real parties” of the Belarusian opposition as opposed to nominal political parties, which struggled to preserve their own identity during the presidential election. Those nominal parties are viewed by “real parties” as a feeding ground: they are used to engage activists and functionaries; sometimes, entire nominal party organizations are employed by real parties.
Under the circumstances, political parties had to nominate their own presidential candidates to preserve their identity. In most cases, they did not nominate leaders, though, but functionaries acting as deputies or co-chairmen. For example, the UCP, weakened by the “proselytism” of Speak the Truth!, nominated deputy chairman of the party, economist Yaroslav Romanchuk; the BPF Party also nominated its deputy chairman Grigory Kostusyov, a Shklov resident. The unregistered BCD party nominated its co-chairman Vitaly Rymashevsky, and the leader of one of the splinters of Belarusian social democracy, the chairman of the permanently unregistered Belarusian Social-Democratic Party Narodnaya Hramada, Nikolay Statkevich, was nominated for presidential candidate at the European Choice congress in June 2009. All the nominees mentioned above managed to collect 100,000 signatures, sufficient to be registered as presidential candidates, although some of them were accused of forging signatures.
The Liberal-Democratic Party of Belarus nominated its chairman Sergey Gaidukevich, who ran for the presidency in 2001 and 2006, however, Gaidukevich withdrew from the race during the collection of signatures citing “the evident outcome of the campaign”. Back in 2001 and 2006, Gaidukevich was considered Lukashenko’s sparring partner, therefore, his withdrawal was interpreted as a proof that Lukashenko needed no sparring partners in a situation when the opposition was unable to agree a single strategy, whereas the risk of losing alternatives (should all candidates withdraw) was minimal. Gaidukevich claimed he had collected the necessary 100,000 signatures to support his status as a candidate.
The only party nominee who failed to collect the required number of signatures was deputy chairman of the Belarusian Green Party Yury Glushakov, who had to admit his failure.
The Belarusian Party of the Left Fair World (former communists) chose a different survival strategy – through the organization of an election monitoring service and campaign to support nomination of opposition representatives in election commissions. That campaign, dubbed For Fair Election, became a continuation of a similar project conducted by the party together with the For Freedom movement and other opposition structures during the parliamentary elections of 2005. The project was implemented simultaneously with the monitoring campaign of the public organizations making part of Human Rights Activists for Free Elections and was somewhat overshadowed by that initiative.
According to Human Rights Activists for Free Elections, of the 84,084 representatives of political parties, public associations, enterprises and communities nominated for membership in 6,346 district election commissions, only 1,073 people were nominated by opposition political parties. The remaining representatives were nominated under control of local authorities, which had "quotas" for enterprises and institutions, and had all members of commissions approved in high places even before the nomination process was completed.
It turned out that only 183 representatives of opposition parties or 17.1% became election commission members, which compares to the average acceptance rate of 84.3% (70,815 people out of 84,084 nominees); the figure was at 87.7% for representatives of the parties loyal to the regime (1,586 out of 1,808) and 93.2% for the four largest pro-governmental public associations and one trade union with the same stance (23,689 out of 25,419). For instance, the acceptance rate for Belaya Rus and Belarusian Women’s Union reached 100% (808 out of 808 and 869 out of 869, respectively).
As a result, representatives of political parties made up 0.25% of all members of district election commissions and were present in 3% of the total number of commissions, which was not enough to influence the work of commissions and the key element of the election – the organization of the voting process and vote count.

Conclusion

The year 2010 was marked by an active participation of political parties in the presidential election, however, this participation had very little to do with the real struggle for power – opposition parties either pursued their own ends or performed auxiliary functions for non-party candidates. The latter had a lot more material resources and were not bound by coalition treaties, which enabled them to dominate in their relations with parties and dictate their will. The active nomination of presidential candidates by political parties was motivated by the wish to preserve their identity, including through manifestations of ideological otherness of this or that party.
In the near future, the development of political parties will be defined by the factor of the parliamentary elections slated for the autumn of 2012. The key areas and initiatives for political parties to channel their efforts in 2011 are as follows: to resist repression and fight for the release of the political prisoners; influence the position of the international community on the situation in Belarus and possible imposition of political and other sanctions against Belarusian officials responsible for human rights abuse. Parties may become the basic internal entity to announce the end of the period of mass political repression, which marked their start on December 19, 2010, the day of the Belarusian presidential election. Political parties are yet to choose their strategy for the coming parliamentary elections in order to make use of the pre-election situation and improve the situation with democracy and human rights in the country. Most of discussions in parties and coalitions will be over the conditions of participation or non-participation in the parliamentary elections should the country still have political prisoners at that time. Those advocating participation in the parliamentary elections will insist on having a new reform of the regulatory framework of the election process, including amendments to the Electoral Code. However, such a reform looks very unlikely, and so does the possibility of a transfer towards elements of the proportional election system. It is also unlikely that the public association Belaya Rus will be transformed into a party, although this topic will be widely discussed in the state media on the initiative of Belaya Rus functionaries, who are interested in increasing the status of that ambiguous structure in the framework of the national political system.