Only a select few go to Belarusian elections. And also tiktoker and Ivanov
In Belarus, the upheavals of 2020 and the subsequent reaction with the tightening of legislation and the purge of all opposition structures led to the fact that interest in the parliamentary elections fell by more than three times. At least among those who are going to participate in them not only as voters.
The republic has completed the formation of initiative groups that will collect 1000 signatures required to register self-nominated candidates. At 110 polling stations for the election of deputies of the House of Representatives, 164 such groups were formed. For comparison, in the 2019 elections there were 503 such self-nominated candidates.
And if in the capital there is still some kind of competition and there are districts where 4 initiative groups are registered (last time it was not uncommon to have 10 or more self-nominated candidates), then in the regions everything is completely boring. In the Brest, Gomel and Grodno regions, more than one initiative group was registered only in a couple of districts.
The Soligorsk urban district has demonstrated an anti-record - no one will be nominated for parliament by collecting signatures in the mining capital of Belarus.
Moreover, this is not because they did not decide to not allow someone to participate in the elections and did not allow them to register an initiative group. On the contrary, this time the election commissions were extremely friendly and registered absolutely everyone. People just didn't want to.
Of course, there will also be nominations from parties. 3 of the 4 political parties remaining after re-registration have already held their congresses and submitted lists of nominees to the Central Election Commission - they are guaranteed to receive places on the ballot. Such an archaism from Soviet times as nomination from the work collective is also guaranteed to get included in the candidate lists.
The number of candidates will, of course, increase in the end, but the quality will change little. The only parties left in Belarus are loyal ones and there are no surprises to be expected from them. As for labor collectives, here, too, everything has been captured for a long time. Not a single large enterprise will take risks in order to nominate a candidate disliked by the authorities.
There is also no need to create illusions about the self-nominated candidates who will collect signatures. The vast majority of them are officials and directors who are up for promotion to parliament or are current deputies. Of course, such people in modern Belarus will never go to the polls without permission, without at least agreeing with their superiors. For them, collecting signatures is a matter of prestige and an indicator of the seriousness of their intentions.
There are no more than a dozen real self-nominated candidates, about whom it can be said with confidence that they do not use administrative resources. And of these ten, the majority have no political experience and are generally unknown to few people. At least, even search engines know nothing about them and it is difficult to say anything about the motives for their nomination. I hope that at least someone, having gained experience in fighting for a deputy seat, will remain in politics; I would like more interesting fresh faces to appear in it.
Something definite can be said about two such independent self-nominated candidates. The first of them is 24-year-old TikToker Artem Dubinin. He lives in the city of Borisov, Minsk region, works as a salesman in an electronics store “drowns” for Russia and SVO in his channel.
Naturally, he is not able to defeat Major General and former head of military intelligence Ruslan Kosygin in the elections, but he will add popularity to both himself and the channel.
Perhaps the only real politician with experience and charisma who has registered his initiative group is Andrei Ivanov, my friend and chairman of the organizing committee of the For the Fatherland party, a pro-Russian conservative, a good speaker, a father of many children and a supporter of traditional values.
Together with him a couple of years ago we were in Crimea, as organizers for the recognition of the Russian status of Crimea by the Belarusian authorities, we participated together in many events. He even tried to run for president in 2020, but, unfortunately, natives of Siberia are not allowed to do this. Only a Belarusian by birth can become the President of Belarus. I am sure that his team is quite capable of collecting 1000 signatures and much more, but the government has put pro-government political scientist and political commentator Alexander Shpakovsky as his competitor.
As for the opposition, there is none. At all. There is not a single person among the self-nominated candidates in any way connected with the pro-Western opposition. Since the opposition parties that could nominate their representatives have also been liquidated, it means that they will not exist.
The most boring and predictable parliamentary elections in the electoral history of Belarus await us. But Lukashenko doesn’t need a show during the elections. Now his task is to consolidate the constitutional reform with minimal risks and ensure the transition of power, the approach of which is seen more and more clearly. That’s why we are seeing elections without opposition, with 80-90 percent of the candidates “on the board,” without any opposition, with a dozen “dark horses,” TikTokers and Ivanov.
English version :: Read in English: Only the chosen few are going to the Belarusian elections. And also the TikToker and Ivanov