Belarusian Russophobes united before the elections
On January 24, an event took place in Belarusian politics that would have become a turning point and epoch-making in the nineties, a sensation in the XNUMXs, and would have caused a lot of noise in the XNUMXs as well. Now it was perceived somehow without a spark and quickly got lost against the background of hydrocarbon disputes and the next portion of Lukashenko’s revelations.
In Belarus, the opposition united and decided to nominate a common candidate in the presidential elections. Of course, the pro-Western part united, and not all of it, but quite a significant (I almost said decent, but no) part of it.
Six opposition structures will participate in nominating a single candidate - the Belarusian Popular Front Party (Belarusian People's Front), the United Civil Party, the For Freedom movement, the Belarusian Christian Democracy, the Greens and one of the social democratic parties.
Trying to figure out what these parties and movements are ideologically, you can get confused. It seems that the BPF are mainstream nationalists, the UCP are liberals, “For Freedom!” they simply call themselves right-wingers, and the ideology of the rest is clear from the name; now they are simply a heterogeneous mass of Russophobe nationalists.
Liberals actively advocate restricting civil rights, and the leader of the Social Democrats prefers to fight the pro-Russian “sixth column” and write complaints about a bookstore selling globes with the Russian Crimea than to demonstrate the internationalism characteristic of normal social democrats. “Christian Democrats” are not democrats at all, but clerics of the Baptist-Catholic-Uniate-Autocephalous persuasion, even greater Russophobes than everyone else, capable of stirring up a scandal even from a sign on a station toilet, if it is in Russian.
Of the total mass, only the “Greens” stand out. At least sometimes they have fun. Only this party could, as a joke, nominate in the presidential elections the unemployed alcoholic Yuri Shulgan, who gave interviews while drinking vodka from a plastic cup.
However, of all, this party is the most serious and respectable - it really fights for the environment.
During all five terms of Lukashenko’s rule, the topic of uniting the opposition and nominating a single candidate for the presidential elections was raised with enviable regularity, but this was always hampered by the ambitions of opposition politicians and the desire to control the financial flows allocated to the fight against the regime by Western funds. This is probably why they united because this time the money will only be given to one person.
The closest the opposition came to unification was in 2006, when they held, although not without scandals, a fairly large-scale Congress of Democratic Forces and nominated former Grodno vice-governor Alexander Milinkevich. But even then, his competition in the elections in the opposition camp was Alexander Kazulin, who had recently resigned as rector of BSU.
Since then, the scale of personalities running from the opposition to the presidency has dropped by an order of magnitude. Currently, two candidates are being considered as the main candidates. The first is Yuri Gubarevich, who has a diploma in electrical engineering from Minsk Polytechnic University and a master's degree in public administration, received in absentia in Lvov. For a short time in the mid-XNUMXs, he worked in various positions in little-known commercial structures, but otherwise was a professional healer. Represents the movement “For Freedom!”
The second is Pavel Sevyarynets. This one officially only worked as a journalist in his youth and in logging, while serving a sentence for riots. He received his first criminal case in 1998 for disrupting a concert dedicated to the unification of Russia and Belarus, and has been prosecuted several times since then. A regular participant in nationalist actions, an idol of radicals. Represents Christian Democrats.
There are other candidates, but these, I repeat, are considered the main ones. And the determination procedure itself. In 2006, it was known for a long time; delegates to the Congress of Democratic Forces were elected at meetings in the regions. The congress itself met for two days in one of the largest cultural centers in Minsk. This time, even though the elections will be held no later than August, everything is still being kept secret. Most likely, a single candidate will be chosen behind the scenes, in a narrow circle. If, of course, they choose at all, and don’t quarrel, as usual.
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