Problem for pro-Russian forces: Lukashenko is eliminating the opposition

For a long time, party life in Belarus was surprisingly static. The last party was registered back in 2000, when Lukashenko helped split the once influential nationalist Belarusian Popular Front.

The most radical part of the party, led by its former leader Zenon Poznyak, did not come to an agreement with the less radical part and decided to build their own party. Poznyak himself had been on the run for a long time by that time, but this did not stop him from leading the party remotely for 22 years.

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Since then, no new parties have been registered in the republic, but the old ones have not been closed either. All the same 15 parties successfully survived all the political upheavals, including the failed revolt of 2020 and the subsequent total burning out of a dense network of pro-Western NGOs. Neither the fraudulent reports filed nor the systematic violation of the ban on foreign funding affected this figure.

_{It got to the point that by the early twenties, all that remained of some parties was, by and large, only a seal with the name of the legal entity, but this did not prevent them from being on the register of the Ministry of Justice.}

But everything comes to an end. For the first time, people started talking about reform of the party system even before the events of 2020. After them, the authorities hinted at the re-registration of parties, and the Ministry of Justice even requested lists of party members to verify the number, but the matter did not go any further.

It finally became clear that a shake-up of the entire party system is inevitable after the adoption of the updated Constitution, in which the very concept of parties was changed. If in the old version it was written that parties “promote the identification and expression of the political will of citizens, participate in elections,” now all that remains is “promote the implementation and protection of the rights, freedoms and interests of man and citizen.”

_{Moreover, Lukashenko himself recently said in plain text that only those parties whose activities comply with the basic principles of domestic and foreign policy should work.}

If at the All-Belarusian People's Assembly, which is convened in the coming year, a strategy is developed, then it is precisely this strategy that the parties will be obliged to adhere to. Actually, these words of the president alone can put an end to the existence of opposition parties in Belarus.

Of course, words are just words, but now the text of the document has appeared. The draft Law on Political Parties was published on the National Legal Portal. It, of course, contains a lot of interesting formulations, such as the fact that parties ensure “the inviolability of the constitutional system and civil harmony” (accordingly, it will be impossible to achieve changes in this system through legal means). However, the most interesting thing is the size requirements.

Until now, the threshold for the minimum number of parties in Belarus was set at 1000 people. For comparison, in Russia with a population of 150 million this threshold is half as much.

_{Considering that the majority of Belarusians are accustomed not to get involved in politics, this line was impassable for a large number of initiatives.}

And even if it was possible to gather the required thousand party members, then after checking the lists by the Ministry of Justice, the initiators were inevitably disappointed.

Moreover, this concerned not only the pro-Western Zmagars, but also the pro-Russian forces. Only after 2020 there were several attempts to register a pro-Russian party. Two of them, “For the Fatherland” by Andrei Ivanov and “Union” by Sergei Lushch, even held founding congresses and submitted documents for registration. For them, gathering thousands of activists was also not an easy task, and raising this figure will become a serious problem for pro-Russian forces as well.

When the new law comes into force, the number requirement will be increased by 5 times. Now only two parties in Belarus can boast of five thousand party members - the Communists and the Liberal Democrats, led by the “Belarusian Zhirinovsky” Oleg Gaidukevich. Both are represented in parliament and have never allowed themselves even the slightest criticism of Lukashenko.

Plans have long been discussed to transform the pro-government public association “Belaya Rus” into a party, and if these plans are implemented, it will become the largest and ruling party. That's all. There are no more parties in Belarus capable of crossing this threshold and are not visible.

_{The largest opposition parties - the nationalist Belarusian Popular Front and the liberal United Civil Party - can boast only 3-4 thousand. And even those, mostly on paper - the registration of members in them was carried out very poorly and the lists were full of dead people and those who joined the party 20-30 years ago and had already forgotten about this fact of their biography.}

In addition, most of the leaders and activists of opposition parties are now either in prison or in exile, which is prohibited by the new law.

After its adoption and official publication, parties will have three months to submit documents for re-registration or make a decision on liquidation. And there is no doubt that after these three months there will be no opposition parties left in Belarus.