Political parties of the Republic of Belarus: list, leaders and programs

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:42

How many political parties are there in Belarus? Despite the non-authoritarian style of governance, Belarus is a constitutional parliamentary-democratic republic with a multi-party system. Therefore, there are quite a few political parties of 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, as they say, have come to the right place. In this article you will find the answer to your question.

Belaya Rus

"Belaya Rus" is a Belarusian public association founded on November 17, 2007 to support President Alexander Lukashenko. Since then, the leaders of the organization have regularly declared their readiness to become a political party. President Lukashenko indirectly opposed this idea and did not support it. He didsuch comments: “Well, if they are ready, let them be a party, I don't mind. On the contrary, I will support it because they are patriots. But I wouldn't 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 "Belaya Rus". The leader of the association is the former Minister of Education of Belarus Alexander Radkov. More than 160,000 people have membership in NGOs.

Farmers

The Agrarian Party is a left-wing 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 initiatives (especially social and agrarian ones) undertaken by the President of the State.

It was established in 1992 as the United Democratic Agrarian Party of Belarus (Ab'yadnanny Agrarian Democratic Party of Belarus). Party leader - Mikhail Shimansky.

In the 1995 legislative elections, she won 33 out 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 seat. In the 2016 elections, the party also lost its only remaining seat.

Socialists and athletes

Belarusian Socialist Sports Party is a political force in Belarus that supports the presidential governmentAlexander Lukashenko. It was founded in 1994. Party leader - Vladimir Aleksandrovich.

The party program implies the comprehensive development of culture and sports, as well as strengthening the defense and he althcare of the Republic of Belarus.

Communists

The Communist Party of Belarus is a radical left and Marxist-Leninist political faction in the country. It was established in 1996 and supports the government of President Alexander Lukashenko. Party leader - Tatyana Golubeva.

The leadership of this political force decided to unite with the Party of Communists of Belarus (PKB). This happened on July 15, 2006. Although the Communist Party of Belarus is a pro-presidential force, the Party of Communists of Belarus has been one of the main opposition factions in the country. According to PKB chairman Sergei Kalyakin, the so-called reunification of the two political associations was a plot to overthrow the opposition PKB leadership.

The CPB ideologists 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 PCB, which is considered by many in the country to be overly pro-Western.

In the 2004 parliamentary elections, the CPB received 5.99%, winning 8 out of110 seats in the House of Representatives, in 2008 - only 6 seats and even fewer in 2012 (3 seats). Nevertheless, thanks to the party's support of President Lukashenko, in 2012, 17 of its members were appointed by him to the position of representatives (senators) of the Upper House.

According to the results of the elections to the local Councils of Deputies of the Republic of Belarus in 2014, the party won 5 seats.

Belarusian "Zhirinovites"

The Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus, or LDPB (LDPB), was established in 1994 as the Belarusian successor to the LDPR. The party supports the incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko. Despite the name, as in the case of the Zhirinovsky organization of the same name, the LDPB is not liberal-democratic in its program, but adheres to a similar nationalist far-right ideology.

In the October 13-17, 2004 legislative elections, the party won 1 out of 110 seats. Her candidate in the 2006 presidential election, Sergei Gaidukevich, received 3.5% of the vote.

According to the official results of the elections to local councils of deputies of the republic (2014), not a single candidate from this political party of Belarus could become a deputy. Gaidukevich is the Deputy Chairman of the Permanent Commission 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

Republican Labor and Justice Party, also known by its acronymRPTS is a social democratic political party of Belarus, founded by Ivan Antonovich in 1993. Chairman - Vasil Zadnyaprany. The party is considered loyal to the government of President Alexander Lukashenko.

The main tasks of the RPTK 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. The participants of the event signed a memorandum of union. Along with the Republican Party of Labor and Justice of Belarus, it included A Just Russia, Kazakhstan's Birlik and the Socialist Party of Ukraine. RPTS calls for recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

At one time, the Republicans congratulated Nicolás Maduro on his victory in the presidential election in Venezuela. In this regard, the RPTS is one of the most loyal to the president among the left political parties of the Republic of Belarus.

At the end of 2012, a charity event was held in Vitebsk, organized by the Republican Party of Labor and Justice, called "The Gift of Santa Claus".

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 inhabitants 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 Belavezha Accords.

In the parliamentary elections in Belarus in 1995, the Republicansreceived 1 out of 198 seats. In the 2000 legislative elections, 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 the elections to the local councils of deputies of the Republic of Belarus (2014), 36 people from among the Republicans were elected. Two members of the RPTS 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 select a single candidate who could defeat incumbent Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the country since 1994, in the election. The activity of political parties in the Republic of Belarus very often comes down to supporting the government, and the opposition is the only exception in this regard.

Belarusian Popular Front

The Belarusian Popular Front is one of the main opposition forces in Belarus and, perhaps, the oldest, most famous and active of them. It survived a split in 1999, and two separate movements with similar names arose from its base. The Belarusian Popular Front was founded during the period of perestroika by representatives of the nationalist Belarusian intelligentsia, among which was evenfamous writer Vasil Bykov. The first and most charismatic leader of the Belarusian Popular Front movement was Zianon Poznyak.

After President Alexander Lukashenko's 2005 decree restricting the use of the words "Belaruski" ("Belarusian") and "Narodny" ("People's") in the names of political parties, the movement had to change its official name to "BPF Party". This decree became an addition to the law on political parties of the Republic of Belarus

History

Belarusian Popular Front was founded in 1988 as a political party and cultural movement following the example of the infamous Estonian and Latvian Popular Fronts and the pro-democracy Lithuanian Sąjūdis movement. Membership has been declared open to all citizens of Belarus as well as to friendly foreigners.

Program

The program of the movement is building 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 official ideologists of the organization promoted the idea of uniting the B altic 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 its official status in Belarus. Russian became the official languageafter the scandalous national referendum in 1995, at the beginning of Lukashenka's rule, when the proposal to give him state status received the support of 83.3% of voters.

Among the significant achievements of the front was the discovery of the burial place of Kurapaty near Minsk. The Front claims that the NKVD carried out extrajudicial killings there.

From dawn to dusk

Initially, the front had considerable fame and popularity due to numerous public actions, which almost always ended in clashes with the police and the KGB. It was the Belarusian Popular Front parliamentarians who convinced the Supreme Council (the temporary Belarusian parliament) to restore the historical Belarusian symbols: the white and red flag and the coat of arms of Pahonia. 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 Belarusian Popular Front intellectuals. Its first prime minister was Vladimir Zablotsky. It originally contained 18 commissions that published ideas and proposed laws and plans to restructure the government and reform the economy. The last proposal for economic reform was published in 1999. In opposition to the government of Alexander Lukashenko, the organization supports Belarus' accession to 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 Belarusian Popular Front. The conservative wing of the party that ruled it under Zenon Pozniak became the Conservative Christian PartyBPF, and the moderate majority became today's "Party of the BPF".

In the 2004 parliamentary elections, the political association was part of the People's Coalition, which in the end did not win a single seat. These elections (according to the OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission) did not meet OSCE standards. The universal principles and constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly were seriously violated, which called into question the willingness of the Belarusian authorities to respect the concept of political competition based on equal treatment of all views, ideas and political forces.

In October 2005, Alyaksandr Milinkevich, a candidate supported by the Belarusian Popular Front and the Green Party, was elected as an all-democratic candidate in the 2006 presidential elections.

In the 2010 presidential election, the "BPF Party" nominated its presidential candidate Ryhor Kastusev, who was then the deputy chairman of the BPF. According to the official results, he won 1.97% of the votes.

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 Borshchevsky, Yury Chadyka, Vinchuk Vyachorka. This event is sometimes called the second split of the Belarusian Popular Front.

The role of political parties in Belarus has practically been reduced to nothing, and the front is no exception in this regard. A new leader was elected at the September 2017 conventionparty Ryhor (Grigory) Kastusev. The congress also decided to nominate two candidates - Aleksey Yanukevich and Belarusian-American lawyer Yuras Zyankovich - for the presidency in the next elections. The final decision regarding the only candidate is to be taken in the future.

In the 90s, the Belarusian Popular Front was one of the most popular political parties and organizations in Western Belarus.