How many political parties are there in Belarus? Despite the non-authoritarian style of governance, Belarus is a constitutional parliamentary-democratic republic, which provides for a multi-party system. Therefore, there are quite a lot of political parties in the Republic of Belarus, and all of them are very diverse from an ideological point of view. But the question of how big a role they play is already much more complex and ambiguous. But if you want to know what political parties are in Belarus, then you are in the right place. In this article you will find the answer to your question.
"White Russia"
Belaya Rus is a Belarusian public association founded on November 17, 2007 to support President Alexander Lukashenko. Since then, the leaders of the organization regularly announced their readiness to become a political party. President Lukashenko indirectly opposed this idea and did not support it. He made such comments: “Well, if they are ready, let them be a party, I do not mind. On the contrary, I will support this because they are patriots. But I would not advise them to rush. ” The party is based on the idea of ​​the All-Russian Popular Front. The absolute support of the president remains the only ideological principle of "White Russia". The leader of the association is the former Minister of Education of Belarus Alexander Radkov. Membership in NGOs has more than 160,000 people.
Farmers
The Agrarian Party is the left agrarian political party in Belarus. Supports the government of President Alexander Lukashenko. In essence, the entire program of this political force comes down to supporting all the initiatives (especially social and agricultural ones) that the president of the state is taking.
It was created in 1992 as the United Democratic Agrarian Party of Belarus (Ab'yadnan Agrarian Democratic Party of Belarus). The leader of the party is Mikhail Shimansky.
In the legislative elections in 1995, she won 33 of 198 seats. In 2000 and 2004, she received only 5 and 3 seats in the House of Representatives, respectively. In 2008, the representation of this political party of Belarus in the main legislative body was reduced to one place. In the 2016 election, the party lost its only remaining seat.
Socialists and Athletes
The Belarusian Socialist Sports Party is a political force in Belarus that supports the government of President Alexander Lukashenko. It was founded in 1994. The leader of the party is Vladimir Alexandrovich.
The party program implies the comprehensive development of culture and sports, as well as the strengthening of the defense and health of the Republic of Belarus.
The communists
The Communist Party of Belarus is a left-wing radical and Marxist-Leninist political faction in the country. It was created in 1996 and supports the government of President Alexander Lukashenko. The leader of the party is Tatyana Golubeva.
The leadership of this political force decided to unite with the Party of Communists of Belarus (PCB). This happened on July 15, 2006. Although the Communist Party of Belarus is a pro-presidential force, the Party of Communists of Belarus was one of the main opposition factions in the country. According to the chairman of the PCB, Sergey Kalyakin, the so-called reunion of the two political associations was a conspiracy designed to overthrow the opposition leadership of the PCB.
The ideologists of the CPB proclaim the strengthening of national security as the main foreign policy goal. They also advocate the development of the Union State of Belarus - Russia and the restoration of the voluntarily renewed Union State, strengthening its political and economic independence.
As a member of the world communist movement, the CPB maintains relations with other communist parties in the region and around the world to a much greater extent than the PKB, which many in the country consider too pro-Western.
In the 2004 parliamentary elections, the PBC received 5.99%, winning 8 out of 110 seats in the House of Representatives, in 2008 - only 6 seats and even less in 2012 (3 seats). Nevertheless, thanks to the support of the party of President Lukashenko in 2012, 17 of its members were appointed by him to the position of representatives (senators) of the Upper House.
Following the results of the elections to the local Councils of Deputies of the Republic of Belarus in 2014, the party received 5 seats.
Belarusian "Zhirinovites"
The Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus, or the LDPB (LDPB), was created in 1994 as the Belarusian successor to the LDPR. The party supports the current president, Alexander Lukashenko. Despite the name, as in the case of the organization of the same name Zhirinovsky, the LDPB is not liberal democratic in its program, but adheres to a similar nationalist extreme right ideology.
In the legislative elections of October 13-17, 2004, the party won 1 out of 110 seats. Her candidate for the 2006 presidential election, Sergei Gaidukevich, received 3.5% of the vote.
According to the official results of the elections to the local councils of deputies of the republic (2014), not a single candidate from this political party of Belarus could become a deputy. Gaydukevich is the deputy chairman of the standing committee of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus on international affairs and national security. He was elected in 2016 as a member of the National Council of the sixth convocation of the Minsk region.
Republicans
The Republican Party of Labor and Justice, also known by the abbreviation RPTS, is the Social Democratic political party of Belarus, founded by Ivan Antonovich in 1993. Chair - Vasil Zadnaprany. The party is considered loyal to the government of President Alexander Lukashenko.
The main objectives of the RPTC include the development of the Union State of Russia and Belarus and the Eurasian Economic Union.
On September 21, 2013, a conference of political parties of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan was held in Minsk. Participants in the event signed a memorandum of alliance. Along with the Republican Party of Labor and Justice of Belarus, it included Fair Russia, Kazakhstan's Birlik and the Socialist Party of Ukraine. RPTC calls for recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
At one time, Republicans congratulated Nicolas Maduro on his victory in the presidential election in Venezuela. In this regard, the RPTC is one of the most loyal to the president among the left-wing political parties of the Republic of Belarus.
At the end of 2012, a charity event organized by the Republican Party of Labor and Justice, entitled “The Gift of Santa Claus,” took place in Vitebsk.
The political executive committee of this organization unanimously declared the results of the referendum on March 16, 2014 in Crimea legal and supported the will of the residents of Sevastopol. The party also called on President Lukashenko to accept the results of the referendum.
She was one of the first political parties and public associations in Belarus to strongly condemn the Bialowieza Accords.
In the parliamentary elections in Belarus in 1995, Republicans won 1 out of 198 seats. In the legislative elections in 2000, they won 2 out of 110 seats in the House of Representatives. The next elections in 2004 and 2008 were not successful for the party. However, in 2012, she still won one seat in parliament.
As a result of elections to local councils of deputies of the Republic of Belarus (2014), 36 people were elected from among the Republicans. Two members of the RPTC are represented in the Minsk City Council of Deputies.
Opposition
The Belarusian Independence Bloc is one of the three main opposition coalitions in Belarus and the largest of them. The coalition was formed in 2009 as an alternative to the United Democratic Forces of Belarus (UDF). The group’s intention is to choose a single candidate who could win the election of the current Alexander Lukashenko, who has been ruling the country since 1994. The activities of political parties in the Republic of Belarus very often come down to supporting the government, and the opposition is the only exception in this regard.
Belarusian Popular Front
The BPF party is one of the main opposition forces in Belarus and, perhaps, the oldest, most famous and most active of them. She survived the split in 1999, and two separate movements with similar names arose on its basis. The Belarusian Popular Front was founded during the period of perestroika by representatives of the nationalist-minded Belarusian intelligentsia, among whom was even the famous writer Vasil Bykov. The first and most charismatic leader of the BPF movement was Zenon Poznyak.
After the decree of President Alexander Lukashenko of 2005 on restricting the use of the words “Belarusian” (“Belarusian”) and “people” (“people”) in the names of political parties, the movement had to change its official name to “BPF Party”. This decree was in addition to the law on political parties of the Republic of Belarus
Story
The Belarusian Popular Front was founded in 1988 as a political party and cultural movement following the example of the notorious popular fronts of Estonia, Latvia and the Lithuanian pro-democratic movement Sayudis. Membership was declared open for all citizens of Belarus as well as for friendly foreigners.
Program
The movement’s program is to build an independent democratic Belarus through national revival and reconstruction after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The main idea of ​​the front was the revival of the national idea, including (and above all) the Belarusian language. Initially, his orientation was pro-Western, with great skepticism towards Russia. For some time, the organization’s official ideologists promoted the idea of ​​uniting the Baltic and Black Seas with the participation of Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and Lithuania, similar to the concept of Intermarium by Jozef Pilsudski.
Anti-Russian rhetoric
The party advocated depriving the Russian language of official status in Belarus. Russian became the official language after a scandalous national referendum in 1995, at the beginning of Lukashenko’s reign, when 83.3% of voters supported the proposal to give it state status.
Among the significant achievements of the front was the discovery of the burial place of Kuropaty near Minsk. The front claims that the NKVD committed extrajudicial killings there.
From dawn to dusk
Initially, the front was of considerable fame and popularity due to numerous public actions, which almost always ended in clashes with the police and the KGB. It was the BPF parliamentarians who convinced the Supreme Council (the interim Belarusian parliament) to restore the historical Belarusian symbols: the white-red flag and the coat of arms of the Pursuit. In Soviet times, people were arrested on the streets for using white and red symbols in the BSSR.
In 1994, Poznyak formed the so-called shadow cabinet, consisting of 100 intellectuals of the Belarusian Popular Front. His first prime minister was Vladimir Zablotsky. Initially, it contained 18 commissions that published ideas and proposed laws and plans for restructuring the government and reforming the economy. The latest proposal for economic reform was published in 1999. In contrast to the government of Alexander Lukashenko, the organization supports Belarus joining NATO and the European Union.
In the late 1990s, the Popular Front split into two parties. Both of them claim to be the legal successors of the original BNF. The conservative wing of the party, which ruled it under Zeno Poznyak, became the Conservative Christian Party of the Belarusian Popular Front, and the moderate majority became the current "BPF Party".
In the 2004 parliamentary elections, the political association was part of the People’s Coalition, which ultimately did not receive a single seat. These elections (according to the OSCE / ODIHR Election Observation Mission) did not meet OSCE standards. The universal principles and constitutional rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly were seriously violated, which cast doubt on the willingness of the Belarusian authorities to respect the concept of political competition on the basis of equal treatment of all views, ideas and political forces.
In October 2005, Alexander Milinkevich - a candidate supported by the Belarusian Popular Front and the Green Party - was elected as a general democratic candidate in the 2006 presidential election.
In the 2010 presidential election, the BPF Party nominated its presidential candidate Rygor Kastusev, who was then the deputy chairman of the BPF. According to official results, he scored 1.97% of the vote.
In 2011, after an internal conflict, more than 90 members left the BPF Party, including several prominent veterans of the original Belarusian Popular Front, such as Lyavon Borschevsky, Yuri Chadyka, Vincuk Vyachorka. This event is sometimes called the second split of the Belarusian Popular Front.
The role of political parties in Belarus has almost been nullified, and the front in this regard is no exception. At the congress in September 2017, the new leader of the party Rygor (Grigory) Kastusev was elected. The congress also decided to nominate two candidates - Alexei Yanukevich and Belarusian-American lawyer Juras Zyankovich - for the presidency in the next election. A final decision on a single candidate should be made in the future.
In the 90s, the Belarusian Popular Front was one of the most popular political parties and organizations in western Belarus.