Belarus: elections will test opposition more than regime?

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The Belarusian opposition needs a fundamental reassessment of its strategy if it is to reconnect with the electorate in the run-up to the September 28 parliamentary elections. “There is no clear agency of change,” analyst Vitali Silitski told a meeting at the National Endowment for Democracy today.

Civil society has overtaken the country’s divided opposition parties as a vehicle for articulating demands, said Silitski, director of the Belarus Institute for Strategic Studies, and a former Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. Preliminary focus group research with pensioners, youths, blue-collar groups and entrepreneurs suggests that open political protest is considered less rational and productive than pursuing achievable, incremental change through single-issue groups like trade unions, women’s groups and housing cooperatives.

President Aleksandr Lukashenka may try to win favor with some European states – and an easing of sanctions – by allowing a handful of opposition members into the new parliament, noted Amb. Karen Stewart, former U.S. Ambassador in Belarus until she was, in effect, expelled last March. But “the point is the process”, she stressed, and the European Union and the U.S. should adopt a consistent approach.

The elections are an important indicator of Belarus’s political evolution, Stewart said. But a further indication of progress and good intent would be a change in the country’s laws governing non-governmental organizations, making it less onerous to register and ending the criminalization of non-registered groups.

As part of a strategy of pre-empting democracy, the regime has successfully attracted parts of the opposition’s social base, said Silitski, including swathes of youth and business sector, by implicitly offering a new social contract in which people cede certain freedoms for basic security. In an authoritarian setting, this social contract is an informal arrangement, established through trial and error, in which “the government tests the borders of tolerance and the society tests its degree of freedom.”

“The good news for protagonists of democratic change,” said Silitski, is that there is no fundamental discrepancy between bread-and-butter demands and value issues.” But activists need to “find the common ground” with votes and stress meaningful terms like self-esteem and dignity rather than an overly abstract discourse of freedom.

On the question of whether the opposition should boycott the forthcoming elections, he argued that only made sense if there was a disciplined and united boycott which left only pro-government candidates on the ballot and made the wider society take notice.

But the fractious opposition, as in previous elections, will probably fail to take advantage of the opportunity, a source of frustration to their external supporters. “The regime’s violations of its own election laws, blatant repression and cynical ploys against democrats, as well as the pre-determined outcome of many of the contests, should not obscure what was also a striking failure of the opposition,” Rodger Potocki, Europe/Eurasia director at the National Endowment for Democracy, wrote of the previous elections.

 HEARING ON UPCOMING ELECTIONS IN BELARUS

Tuesday, September 16 at 2:30 p.m. in room B-318 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Co-Chairmen of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission), will hold a hearing entitled, “Business as Usual? Belarus on the Eve of Elections.”

The hearing will examine the state of democracy and human rights in Belarus and how the Belarusian authorities are complying with their election commitments to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in advance of the September 28 parliamentary elections.

Last month, authorities released Belarus’ most prominent political prisoner, Alexander Kozulin, and two others, fulfilling a key demand of the United States and European Union. This, together with Belarusian leader Lukashenka’s unenthusiastic response to Russia’s aggression in Georgia also has raised a glimmer of possibility for an improvement in Belarus’ ties with the United States and European Union. Nevertheless, to date, there has been no appreciable progress in human rights and democracy in the run up to the elections.

WITNESSES

The Honorable David J. Kramer, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor

Mr. Stephen B. Nix, Regional Program Director, Eurasia, International Republican Institute

Ms. Laura Jewett, Regional Director, Eurasia, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs

Mr. Rodger Potocki, Director, Europe and Eurasia, National Endowment for Democracy

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency that monitors progress in the implementation of the provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords. The Commission consists of nine members from the United States Senate, nine from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce.