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Valer Karbalevich: No Real Opposition Will Be Admitted To “Parliament”

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Valer Karbalevich: No Real Opposition Will Be Admitted To “Parliament”
VALER KARBALEVICH
PHOTO: RADIO SVABODA

The authorities could only let their “underparts” like Haidukevich and Ulakhovich there.

A roundtable discussion “Standards for conducting elections and improvement of the electoral process in the Republic of Belarus”, organized by PACE together with the Belarusian “National Assembly”, took place on May 18 in Minsk. Making a speech before the audience, Rapporteur on Belarus of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Andrea Rigoni has stated that the “parliament” should include the opposition, and Belarus should join PACE.

The parliamentary “electoral campaign” is coming, while the promised IMF credit remains under a question mark. Will this make the Belarusian officials to take into account the recommendations of the Europeans, who want the opposition to appear in the Belarusian “parliament” at last?

Political scientist Valer Karbalevich believes that such scenario remains unlikely to happen.

— If the opposition members come through to the “parliament”, they won’t be able to influence its decisions. However, the “parliament” remains a tribune. Any opposition activist would take advantage of this – they will become the center of informational flows, they will be referred to all the time, comment something. Even the delegations from Europe will meet this person in the first place. Why the authorities need this? Especially, taking into account all the economic problems.

The political scientist does not believe that the real opposition could come through to the parliament today, but admits that some politicians close to the authorities may get there.

— They may try to pass, for instance, Haidukevich or Ulakhovich, to the parliament, to be able to say, like, they were Lukashenka’s opponents at the “presidential election” and now they got to the “parliament”. Such imitation looks quite real.

However, even such variant is not necessary as Europe does not insist too strongly on the opposition being presented in the “parliament”, the expert thinks. It is important for Europe so that the “parliamentary elections” would pass not worse than the “presidential”.

— In case some brutal things happen, like the opposition being beaten up or sent to prison, or new political prisoners emerge, then there will be certain reaction, — Valer Karbalevich says. — If everything looks peaceful from the outside, Europe will provide standard statements that the “elections” did not correspond with the European standards and everything will be over.

Karbalevich explains such behavior of the European politicians to Solidarity by the fact that the Ukrainian crisis changed many priorities in Europe and the human rights issue was “gradually transferred to the background”.

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