Shares of Lukashenko's successor begin to rise
In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko launched preparations for the 2024 political season. Everything happened quickly, taking just a couple of days.
First, on Thursday, Natalia Kochanova, speaker of the upper house of the Belarusian parliament, arrived at the Palace of Independence. Interestingly, to emphasize the importance of the meeting, major state media outlets made sure to mention the two briefcases of documents she brought with her to the meeting with the president.
It is known that the topics of the "in-depth conversation" included the upcoming local and parliamentary elections, personnel issues, and the situation in Minsk. Regarding the details of this conversation, the presidential press service was tight-lipped. No details about the personnel issues raised during the discussion or the situation in Minsk were released.
Regarding the upcoming elections, a meeting was announced with the leaders of the four parties remaining after the summer re-registration , which took place on Friday.
The official start of the election campaign will be announced very soon. The new version of the Constitution has established the date for a single voting day. Now, elections for deputies at all levels must be held every four years on the last Sunday of February, and the corresponding decree must be signed no later than three months prior.
The events of the last two days were not loud or dramatic, but they summed up three years of political transformation in Belarus, during which the republic has changed more than in the previous twenty.
The period from 2020 to 2023 was a transition period to a new era of Belarusian statehood, which will begin in 2024. During this time, Lukashenko emerged victorious from the difficult post-election political crisis, suppressing opposition speeches, tightening the screws to the limit, cutting off all channels of Western financial support for the “fifth column”, closing hundreds of foreign-funded NGOs and sending thousands of opposition activists to jail, and dozens thousand - to emigrate.
Harsh and undemocratic? Absolutely. But this was a correction of mistakes made over many years of multi-vector policy, and the alternative to these measures would have been turning Belarus into Ukraine's number two . Having suppressed the radical opposition, Lukashenko carried out constitutional reform and restructured the party system.
Lukashenko first announced constitutional reform long before the 2020 presidential elections , but work on it initially proceeded haphazardly—meetings were held every few months, but even the general outlines of the future state structure were not revealed to the country's citizens.
After the election of Lukashenko, constitutional reform was taken up in earnest, a nationwide discussion was announced, the dates of which were repeatedly postponed. As a result, the final text appeared at the end of 2021, and the referendum was held calmly and without shocks on February 27, 2022.
The new Belarusian system of government has proven cumbersome and unfamiliar. It includes the All-Belarusian Assembly, a new collective body empowered to make key and strategic decisions. It all seems unusual, but the goal is clear: Lukashenko wants to protect the country from major upheavals after his departure. The existing personalist model was very vulnerable in this regard. Whether the new model will help, time will tell.
That the party system would no longer be the same became clear when voters were shown the text of the new Constitution . Now, parties no longer "facilitate the identification and expression of the political will of citizens," but "facilitate the realization and protection of the rights, freedoms, and interests of individuals and citizens."
At a meeting with party leaders on Friday, Lukashenko clarified the distinction.
“During the re-registration, we cleared the party field of decorative associations and those whose activities are aimed at undermining the foundations of the constitutional system of our country,” Father noted.
Now, the parties' task is to "represent the interests of their members before the state and also assist the authorities in explaining the decisions they make." There is no longer any opposition party in Belarus at the constitutional level. Of the 15 parties, only four remain. All opposition and minor pro-government parties failed to re-register.
At the same time, Lukashenko has no intention of creating a ruling party, a new Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). At a meeting with the party leadership, the head of the newly formed "Belaya Rus," which was predicted to play such a role, sat at a distance from the president and did not stand out among his colleagues.
Lukashenko chose to allow some pluralism and variability within the official discourse, while remaining "above the fray." Incidentally, I note that the "systemic nationalists," who have been behaving noisily and scandalously of late, are now without their own party.
There are no surprises to be expected from the elections. It's likely that open opposition figures will be absent, not only among the winners but also among the candidates. The simplest mechanism for opposition nomination has always been through parties. They hold a congress, submit a list to the electoral commission, and are guaranteed to be on the ballot. Now, only pro-government parties are eligible, and after many who signed for Tikhanovskaya or Babariko in 2020 faced significant problems for doing so, collecting signatures is no longer an option for opposition figures.
Finally, one more personal point cannot be overlooked. Natalia Kochanova's shares continue to rise. It was with her meeting that Lukashenko began preparing for the final stage of his political transformation. Several years ago, he would have discussed election campaign issues with the chairperson of the Central Election Commission, personnel matters (clearly referring to important figures) with the head of his own administration, and the capital's problems with the mayor of Minsk. Now, he does so with the speaker of the Council of the Republic, whose purview these issues are officially not within.
Following the adoption of the new Constitution, Kochanova officially became the second-in-command of the state and Lukashenko's successor should anything happen to him. She is the most publicly visible of Belarusian officials, wielding considerable influence over personnel policy. In recent years, people close to her have been appointed to a number of key positions in the Belarusian government—they have already been informally dubbed the "Vitebsk clan." It is now clear that she, from Polotsk, will play a key role in the political transformation of 2024.
The former utility worker from Polotsk is closer than ever to becoming Lukashenko’s successor. Some experts even admit that she will become the president of Belarus in 2025, when Lukashenko does not serve another term, retaining the post of head of the All-Belarusian People's Assembly, which can be held for life, while retaining very broad powers, including including the impeachment of the current president if he turns out to be too obstinate.
Time will tell whether this scenario will materialize, but Kochanova's strengthening is a positive factor . She doesn't possess Lukashenko's charisma, but she has proven herself a skilled political administrator, isn't prone to swinging to extremes, and is unlikely to play multi-vector games with unpredictable outcomes.
Lukashenko's successor's stock is starting to rise.