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Se Viktor Babariko has been in prison for two and a half months. The former bank director was arrested in mid-June for alleged economic crimes, as it became increasingly clear that his candidacy for the presidential election in Belarus could pose a threat to the ruler Aleksandr Lukashenka. A few days before his arrest, Babariko had recorded an address on video in which he announced the beginning of a new stage in the struggle for democracy in Belarus: the establishment of a movement or a party.
On Monday night, her colleagues posted this video as the first part of an announcement: In a newly recorded second part, her chief of staff, Marija Kolesnikowa, announced her decision to found a political party called “Together” to give a new it shapes the struggle for a democratic Belarus. . The necessary documents must be presented to the authorities in the next few days.
Until this moment, the tactical or substantive differences in the protest movement against the Lukashenka government had been almost invisible. The three women who had become leaders of the anti-Lukashenka movement after the incarceration or non-admission of serious male presidential candidates by the regime had always been in complete agreement.
But the opposition candidate Svetlana Tichanovskaya did not want to leave this announcement by Kolesnikova, the only one of the three who is still in Belarus: from exile in Lithuania, she published a statement in which she welcomed the establishment of political parties as a sample of the search for democracy. But she harshly criticized Kolesnikova’s actions. The plan to present documents to the authorities “signifies the will to change the subject from a change of power to the will to ask permission from the rulers to found a party.”
“First the demands of the citizens, then the reforms”
Furthermore, Tichanovskaya saw the most important demands of the protest movement undermined by the double video: Lukashenka’s resignation, the release of all political prisoners, an end to the repression and their prosecution, as well as free and fair elections. He is particularly bothered by two passages of Babariko’s speech, which took place at a time when a mobilization like the one Belarus has experienced since then was hardly imaginable: he describes constitutional reform as the most important task for the near future. he talks about “we couldn’t win the elections.”
The security forces arrested the students demonstrating in Minsk on September 1.
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Image: EPA
“Everyone knows that this is not the case. We won, but they are trying to steal our victory from us. That is precisely the reason why people took to the streets en masse to protest, ”says Tichanowskaja’s statement. And the demand for a constitutional reform sounds “ambiguous” in view of Lukashenka’s attempts to “delay his departure by speaking of an unclear constitutional reform at an unspecified time.” The political agenda should not be changed by starting the debate on a new constitution: “First the demands of the citizens, then the reforms that are possible after honest elections.”
