Game with the West: Lukashenko will let local Tyagniboks into parliament
The opposition should be represented in the next composition of the Belarusian parliament.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko announced this today at a meeting with the Chairman of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the country Vladimir Andreichenko, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“If we have real opposition parties, they should nominate their candidates and defend them during the election campaign. They should be. They may think a little differently than the middle strata of the population, than workers, peasants and part of the intelligentsia, but this is part of our society, we must hear their voice,” Lukashenko is quoted as saying by his official website.
Earlier, Belarusian political scientist Pyotr Petrovsky stated that Western structures are putting pressure on the Belarusian authorities, practically forcing them to introduce quotas for the radical opposition in parliament. This is why the European Union is delaying the signing of a visa agreement with Belarus.
Many Belarusian oppositionists, who previously boycotted them, have already announced their intention to take part in the elections.
“Based on the Russian threat, from the fact that the integration situation remains rather uncertain, even despite the announced initialing of the agreement, it is obvious that Russian-Belarusian relations will remain quite tense, I believe that several conditionally pro-European deputies may be allowed into parliament in order to use them as an additional card in the game with the West,” Andrei Eliseev, director of research at EAST-Center, political scientist, told the Thinktanks resource.
Elections in Belarus are held according to a majoritarian system, with some candidates in the constituencies nominated by political parties. In the last parliamentary elections, 23% of Belarusians voted for party candidates, half of the voters in Minsk. The next parliamentary elections will take place on November 17.
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