Photo of the Seimas Office (author Olga Posaškova)

 

“The case of Belarus represents a great challenge not only to democracy promoters but also to scholars, since the country has been rather insensitive towards all the policies employed with regard to it,” said Giedrė Purvaneckienė, Head of the Seimas Delegation to the Baltic Assembly and President of the Baltic Assembly, as she welcomed the participants of the seminar on Belarus and the Eastern Partnership after the election in Belarus.

 

“Democracy and human rights have been given a priority in the EU’s development of relations with Belarus. This is stated in the majority of the official documents and rhetorical addresses to Belarus. Nevertheless, it seems that Belarus represents one of the most difficult and reluctant cases for the EU in its efforts to succeed in bringing forth a democratic change,” Mrs Purvaneckienė said. She also stressed that despite the difficulties, the international community needed to look for opportunities to cooperate with Belarus. Mrs Purvaneckienė believed there was a need to jointly cope with the common issues related to environmental security in cross-border regions. She argued that democratic processes in Belarus had to and might be stimulated through low level cooperation based on bottom-up engagement, as this could contribute to the development of more intense and reliable relations and create possibilities for public actors to choose more transparent modes of governance.

 

Höskuldur Þórhallsson, President of the Nordic Council (Iceland), recalled the Nordic-Baltic efforts to cooperate with the Belarusian NGOs and oppositional political parties and the frozen relations with the official Minsk since 2010 when Alexander Lukashenko was once again elected President of the country. Mr Þórhallsson also noted that over the last two years, key changes had taken place in the neighbouring countries, namely, Ukraine and Russia, which had considerable influence on the development of Belarus. He pointed out to the changed situation following this year’s presidential election in Belarus and appreciated the fact that there were many representatives from Belarus who could share the latest experience and their insights.

 

The seminar featured speeches by Andrea Rigoni, Belarus rapporteur of the Political Affairs Committee, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE); Bogdan Andrzej Zdrojewski, Chair of the Delegation for relations with Belarus, European Parliament; and Senator Bogdan Klich, Minority Leader at the Senate of the Republic of Poland and former Chair of the Delegation for relations with Belarus, European Parliament. They all overviewed the situation in Belarus after the recent presidential election and concluded, in general, that the election was peaceful, that the government’s stance had softened, and that political prisoners were released. The speakers believed such changes were determined by the deteriorating economic situation in Belarus and the new geopolitical challenges. They expressed their view that the upcoming parliamentary election in Belarus in 2016 would serve as a litmus test for Lukashenko’s regime, where it would be revealed as to whether the recent changes had been merely cosmetic ones or, perhaps, they marked a small step towards Western values.

 

In the meantime, the representatives of the Belarusian opposition took a more critical stance when referring to the situation in the country and the 2015 presidential election, as they maintained that the assessments by EU representatives were too optimistic. In the words of Anatoliy Liabedzka, Chairman of the United Civil Party of Belarus, “there were no elections in the country at all”. He criticised the EU representatives for failure to meet international standards in their assessment of the presidential election in Belarus and claimed that “the voting right of the people of Belarus had to be reinstated”. Mr Liabedzka encouraged the international community to press the official Minsk on holding democratic elections just like it had been pressured for liberation of political prisoners.                 

 

Tatsiana Korotkevich, Tell the Truth (Govori Pravdu) candidate in the recent presidential election, also stressed that there were no fair and just elections in Belarus while the regime in Belarus was “a dictatorship which fairly successfully imitated democracy”. Ms Korotkevich informed that the political power represented by her in the presidential election had a goal of peaceful change and aimed at attracting as many proponents as possible and prompting greater civil activeness among ordinary people. She believed a lot had been achieved with regard to the set goals. When referring to the upcoming parliamentary election, Ms Korotkevich highlighted the importance of unity of the opposition and underlined that the EU’s support for Belarus continued to be highly valuable.

 

The Nordic Council and the Baltic Assembly has organised a total of 7 parliamentary seminars since 2007. All seminars took place in Vilnius, except for one held in Minsk in 2010. The first seminars featured representatives from the Belarusian parliament. Since 2011, only representatives of the oppositional parties of Belarus take part in the seminars. The aim of the seminars is to promote dialogue between the Belarusian regime and the opposition and strengthen democracy and civil society in Belarus. 

 

 

Jolanta Anskaitienė, Public Relations Unit, Communications Department, tel. +370 5 239 6508, e-mail: [email protected]