Whom the West should support in Belarus? A time for a strategic approach

Tradi­tional opposition parties and movements has long seized to be a polit­i­cally meaningful force in Belarus. It is time for Western decision-makers to finally admit this unpleasant reality and shift its rather scarce attention and resources to more promising segments of Belarusian civil society.

After Alexander Lukashenko took and consol­i­dated his autocratic power in Belarus in 1996, the oppor­tu­nities for the opposi­tional activity have shrunk. Opposition was removed from the parliament, local self-gover­nance, electoral commis­sions and nationwide media. The unautho­rized protest activity was made illegal and personally dangerous for the leaders and groups, who dared to go to the streets.

Business was explicitly warned against supporting the opposition. The politi­cians had to turn to foreign, usually – Western funding, which in some cases added other aspects to their motivation. Foreign fundraising has become instru­mental to the opposition’s preser­vation, while the connection with the electorate has become thinner.

Deprived of political oppor­tu­nities in the country, the opposition, metaphor­i­cally speaking, began to rot from inside. Coupled with regular crack downs, this absence of success stories has made even the pro-democ­ratic people in Belarus learn a simple lesson – lose affil­i­ation with the opposition will, at best, do nothing for the country’s future, or – at worst – bring about troubles for a person’s own living.

While the race for presi­dential elections in 2010 with a dozen opposition candi­dates was a relatively open campaign, the crackdown on the protests against fraud on the election’s eve with arrests and prison sentences for nearly all opposition candi­dates led to a decap­i­tation of the opposition parties. Opposition leaders that were not imprisoned fled the country or withdrew from political exposure. The aftermath of 2010 is a systematic destruction of the tradi­tional opposition that never recovered from this strike.

The lack of success of the opposition has led to a phenomenon often described as negative selection. Most of the ambitious young profes­sionals, who in other countries might have become political activists, in Belarus prefer other ways of self-actual­ization. It may be business, art, civil society, science, education abroad, but not politics. As a result, compe­tence and human resources have been leaving the opposition as well. The parties had to rely on the activists and leaders, most of whom got into politics in the 1990‑s.

Finally, even the opposition leaders have accepted a bitter reality that they have virtually no chances to win in the foreseeable future. This has removed the motivation to unite forces with others. Fractures and fragmen­tation have become a mode of existence for many opposition groups.

Since 1996, when Lukashenko removed checks on his power, the opposition made nearly 20 attempts to create various coali­tions and blocks. Even the most promising of them – the Coordi­nation Council of Democ­ratic Forces (estab­lished in 1999), United Democ­ratic Forces (2004), Belarusian Independent Block (2009), and People’s Refer­endum (2013) – all ended with emotional divorces.

To reiterate, not only the opposition itself is to blame. It is objec­tively hard to sustain a vibrant political activity, when opposed by the consol­i­dated and often brutal author­i­tarian regime. However, this injustice does not alter the fact that the tradi­tional opposition is hardly capable of becoming a source of change in Belarus.

The presi­dential campaign of 2020 has become the best confir­mation of that. The cocktail of economic crisis and Lukashenko’s dismis­siveness of the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an unprece­dented rise in political activity in the country. But the leaders, who channeled this popular disaf­fection, were all the political neophytes – the former banker Viktor Babariko, former senior official Valery Tsepkalo and a youtube-blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky.

Where was the opposition? Part of them decided to boycott the election. Several groups within the Centre-right coalition were arguing about the procedure to nominate a single candidate, and then failed to do so in time. Some groups and leaders joined Tikhanovsky’s movement and fell under the crackdown together with him. Only two recog­nizable opposition leaders – a former MP Anna Kanopatskaya and the head of a moderate campaign Tell the Truth Andrei Dmitriev – applied for regis­tration as candi­dates for presi­dency but were overshadowed by the new alter­native leaders.

The Western policy makers, including the political founda­tions and national govern­ments, have never had too much funding or political attention reserved for Belarus. That is precisely why it is important to focus all the available resources and energy on those sectors of civil society, which have the long-term potential to bring about positive change and democ­ra­ti­zation of the country.

The impulse to this change can only emerge organ­i­cally from inside the country. There is hardly any feasible way to speed up the civic maturation or to make society demand pluralism and self-gover­nance. Such changes are usually driven by tectonic internal trends of urban­ization, devel­opment of a private sector, gener­a­tional change, rising levels of education or degra­dation of the ruling regime.

On the other hand, even despite regular crack­downs, some civil society organi­za­tions are vibrant and gaining steam in Belarus. This pool includes networks of grass­roots volunteer initia­tives, the crowd­sourcing and crowd­funding platforms, human rights defenders’ groups etc.

One of the most acute examples of this is the #ByCovid19 initiative. It was born as an alliance of initia­tives from several civil society sectors. They managed to crowd­source unprece­dented amount of funds (hundreds of thousands of Euros) and hundreds of volun­teers to support the frontline healthcare workers with what they needed. While the government did little and, at times, was dismissive of the pandemic, the volun­teers produced masks, face-protection plastic screens and other kinds of protective gear. They organized the delivery of food and disin­fec­tants to doctors all over the country.

Key to their success was the profound public trust earned by their actions. Building that trust is crucial to the long-term sustain­ability of civil society groups, but also for the nationwide and local independent media, human rights defenders and bloggers.

These manifes­ta­tions of civil activism at first glance might seem somewhat apolitical or toothless. This is a mistaken perception. The mentioned #ByCovid19 initiative has grown out of another project #ByHelp, which, among other things, used to run crowd­funding campaigns in support of activists and politi­cians, who had been fined for street protests. There is no doubt that technical expertise, skills of networking and mobilization gained during COVID-19 outbreak will be used again future, poten­tially – in circum­stances that are more political.

These new movement mark a change of mind of the Belarusian society. 15 years ago, there was only few independent political and societal activity besides the tradi­tional opposition movements and some brave human right groups. Today, broader parts of a more self-confident society take over respon­si­bility for their issues no longer waiting for the author­i­tarian state to organize public life.

Autocratic systems built around the person­ality of the leader can fold like the house of cards, with no one expecting it. If followed by vacuum, the new regime might appear to be even tougher than the previous one. To prepare for the inevitable time of changes in Belarus, civil society struc­tures should be ready and able to coordinate citizens and take respon­si­bility for the country’s future. Alas, as of today, the Belarusian opposition does not qualify to be this force.

Supporting the horizontal infra­structure of activism, together with independent media, bloggers and human rights defenders, would be an investment into a long-term resilience of Belarusian civil society. These agents of change, unlike the tradi­tional opposition, are likely to make a difference for the democ­ratic opening of the society.

For European partners, a learning should be that the former focusing on elections and campaigns as leverage for and indicator of democ­ratic change is no longer an appro­priate political strategy towards Belarus. Even though election campaigns can become a catalyst for politi­zation, democracy is more than just more or less free and fair elections and must grow from the bottom. Working for opening spaces for civil engagement might be more promising on the long run.