PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • List of Members
    • Ukraine Experts
    • About Membership
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcast
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
Contacts

Address
1957 E St NW,
Washington, DC 20052

adminponars@gwu.edu
202.994.5915

NEWSLETTER
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Podcast
PONARS Eurasia
PONARS Eurasia
  • About
    • Contact
    • List of Members
    • Ukraine Experts
    • About Membership
    • Executive Committee
  • Policy Memos
    • List of Policy Memos
    • Submissions
  • Podcast
  • Online Academy
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Recommended
  • Ukraine Experts
DIGITAL RESOURCES
digital resources

Bookstore 📚

Knowledge Hub

Course Syllabi

Point & Counterpoint

Policy Perspectives

RECOMMENDED
  • The Baltic States Are Also Worried About Russia

    View
  • International Society Must Act in the Wake of Russia’s Failed Opposition

    View
  • The Collapse of the Soviet Union | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy

    View
  • Labor Migration in Russia | PONARS Eurasia Online Academy

    View
  • Did Russia Put Its Geopolitical Glasses Back On? It Never Took Them Off in the First Place

    View
RSS PONARS Eurasia Podcast
  • The Putin-Xi Summit: What's New In Their Joint Communique ? February 23, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman speaks with Russian China experts Vita Spivak and Alexander Gabuev about the February meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and what it may tell us about where the Russian-Chinese relationship is headed.
  • Exploring the Russian Courts' Ruling to Liquidate the Memorial Society January 28, 2022
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with scholars Kelly Smith and Benjamin Nathans about the history, achievements, and impending shutdown of the Memorial Society, Russia's oldest and most venerable civic organization, and what its imminent liquidation portends for the Russian civil society.
  • Russia's 2021 census and the Kremlin's nationalities policy [Lipman Series 2021] December 9, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with social scientist Andrey Shcherbak about the quality of the data collected in the recent population census and the goals of Vladimir Putin's government's nationalities policy
  • Active citizens of any kind are under threat [Lipman Series 2021] November 5, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Alexander Verkhovsky about the Kremlin's ever expanding toolkit against political and civic activists, journalists, and other dissidents.
  • Russia's Legislative Elections followup [Lipman Series 2021] October 4, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Tanya Lokot and Nikolay Petrov about the results of Russia’s legislative elections and about what comes next.
  • Why Is the Kremlin Nervous? [Lipman Series 2021] September 14, 2021
    In this week’s PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Ben Noble and Nikolay Petrov about Russia’s September 17-19 legislative elections, repressive measures against electoral challengers, and whether to expect anything other than preordained results.
  • Vaccine Hesitancy in Russia, France, and the United States [Lipman Series 2021] August 31, 2021
    In this week's PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Denis Volkov, Naira Davlashyan, and Peter Slevin about why COVID-19 vaccination rates are still so low across the globe, comparing vaccine hesitant constituencies across Russia, France, and the United States.  
  • Is Russia Becoming More Soviet? [Lipman Series 2021] July 26, 2021
      In a new PONARS Eurasia Podcast episode, Maria Lipman chats with Maxim Trudolyubov about the current tightening of the Russian political sphere, asking whether or not it’s helpful to draw comparisons to the late Soviet period.
  • The Evolution of Russia's Political Regime [Lipman Series 2021] June 21, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Grigory Golosov and Henry Hale about the evolution of Russia's political regime, and what to expect in the lead-up to September's Duma elections.
  • Volodymyr Zelensky: Year Two [Lipman Series 2021] May 24, 2021
    In this week's episode of the PONARS Eurasia Podcast, Maria Lipman chats with Sergiy Kudelia and Georgiy Kasianov about Ukrainian President Zelensky's second year in office, and how he has handled the political turbulence of the past year.
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Parliamentary Elections in Belarus: A Couple Holes Patched, but Bucket Still Leaking

  • September 12, 2016
  • Arkady Moshes

It would be an exaggeration to say that Minsk did everything it could to please the West during the parliamentary elections that took place in Belarus this past Sunday. But it has certainly done enough to make sure that the ongoing rapprochement between the two will not be jeopardized.

During the campaign, the opposition was treated far more liberally than previously. Post-election protest efforts were not large and passed uneventfully with a strong police presence.

As for noteworthy results, one candidate from the political opposition and one from civil society managed to claim seats in the parliament, the first time this has happened since 2000. And only 28 out of 110 members of the previous parliament were reelected. The number of female MPs increased from 29 to 38, or 34 percent of the total membership in the newly elected House of Representatives (up from 26 percent). (The upper chamber, the Council of the Republic, is not directly elected by the population.)

The OSCE monitors’ preliminary assessment is that much more could have been done to bring Belarus closer to election standards, but they also found that cooperation with the authorities was “constructive.”

Does this imply that the “winds of change” are blowing in Belarus?

Many in the country itself will not find the picture “rosy.” Some will draw attention to the extremely high levels of early voting (more than 30 percent of the electorate), which is usually a lot less transparent for observers than voting on election day. Others will point out a contradiction between the sky-high officially reported turnout of almost 75 percent and massive anecdotal evidence of empty polling stations.

Commentators found it hardly coincidental that United Civic Party opposition representative Anna Kanopatskaya won in the very same district where Tatyana Korotkevich, a former presidential candidate and leader of the Tell the Truth opposition group, also ran. In the pundits’ view, this puts the whole process in doubt while at the same time promising further discord within opposition ranks.

Paradoxically, though, both hopefuls and skeptics may have a point. As ironically observed by Belarusian journalist Artem Shraibman, when somebody has a bucket with a hundred holes in it, patching two or three of them does not change anything, but “progress” can be registered. In these elections, enough of the right “boxes were ticked” on the West’s scorecard for Alexander Lukashenko to make both parties feel “satisfied.”

The problem is that the Belarusian parliamentary elections matters very little.

What matters instead is the quickly worsening Belarusian economic situation. In 2015, Belarusian GDP fell by 3.7 percent, and in the first half of 2016 by another 2.7 percent. Minsk has $3.3 billion of foreign debt due in 2016, and $3.4 billion due in 2017. The gold and currency reserves of Belarus are currently at $4.7 billion, but this will not even cover two months of imports. Hard currency revenues are not to be expected. Over January-June 2016, Belarusian exports decreased by 19%, out of which those to Europe decreased by 32 percent, and to China by an appalling 80 percent.

The West does not have the appetite to bail out Belarus and replace Russia as the main source of subsidies for the Minsk treasury. All the EU (and Belarus) can do is “play on the margins” and persuade European financial institutions to allocate some project funds. But it is clear that without a large macroeconomic package from the IMF, which would be conditional on the launch of real economic reforms, the situation will not critically improve. In turn, any such reforms are prone to produce social discontent, which makes the regime even more reluctant.

Analysts will soon forget about Belarus’s 2016 parliamentary elections. There have been only cosmetic changes in the Belarusian political system. However, it will be very interesting to see for how long the positive momentum in Belarusian-Western relations can be maintained, particularly if Western funds do not follow the current rhetoric of partnership.

 

Arkady Moshes
Website | + posts
Director of the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia Programme

Affiliation

Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)

Links

Finnish Institute of International Affairs (Bio)

Expertise

Russia-EU Relations, Internal and Foreign Policy of Ukraine and Belarus
  • Arkady Moshes
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/arkady-moshes/
    Forever Together? Relations Between Moscow and Minsk After the Belarusian Revolution of 2020
  • Arkady Moshes
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/arkady-moshes/
    Belarus Protests Have Explosive Potential for EU-Russia Relations
  • Arkady Moshes
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/arkady-moshes/
    Лукашенко отказался уходить и пообещал новую Конституцию вместо выборов
  • Arkady Moshes
    https://www.ponarseurasia.org/members/arkady-moshes/
    Belarus without Lukashenko: How it became a realistic scenario
Related Topics
  • Belarus
  • Elections
  • Moshes
Previous Article
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Спикер парламента Грузии предложил разместить в стране американскую военную базу

  • September 12, 2016
  • Kornely Kakachia
View
Next Article
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Україні важливо припинити гарячу фазу війни, але не піти на поступки Путіну

  • September 13, 2016
  • Olexiy Haran
View
You May Also Like
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем
  • Territorial Conflict

Dominating Ukraine’s Sky

  • Volodymyr Dubovyk
  • March 5, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии
  • Recommended | Рекомендуем

Russian Anti-War Protests and the State’s Response

  • Lauren McCarthy
  • March 4, 2022
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Путин и Лукашенко

  • Konstantin Sonin
  • August 29, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Отравление оппозиционеров в России превратилось в регулярную практику

  • Vladimir Gelman
  • August 22, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Авторитарные режимы не вечны: О ситуации в Белоруссии

  • Vladimir Gelman
  • August 14, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

В Беларуси пока что все идет по российскому сценарию

  • Olexiy Haran
  • August 12, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Опасная игра Лукашенко

  • Pavel Baev
  • August 11, 2020
View
  • Commentary | Комментарии

Власть справилась

  • Sergei Medvedev
  • August 10, 2020

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

PONARS Eurasia
  • About
  • Membership
  • Policy Memos
  • Recommended
  • Events
Powered by narva.io

Permissions & Citation Guidelines

Input your search keywords and press Enter.