European People’s Party reps doubtful of Belarus MP elections’ transparency (interview)

“We will not help Belarusian authorities set up a theatre. It is already obvious that the forthcoming parlimentary elections are not going to be transparent and democratic,” European People’s Party leader Joseph Daul said as he spoke in front of young members of the opposition on September 2 in Minsk.

MEP Michał Boni, a member of the European People’s Party and Poland’s former Labor Minister, made a comment on the colleague’s statement for Belsat TV.

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Do you share the opinion of your party’s chairman and why?

There is still a lot of doubts and threats which primarily stem from your past that was not very rosy, from what happened in the Belarusian politics before. And now we should carefully and closely monitor the situation with the parliamentary election in Belarus.

Some news received from the representatives of the OSCE do give us cause for optimism and show that the preparation for this election is now a shade better than before. But, of course, we are saddened by the fact that only about 800 candidates are running for 110 seats in parliament, and only about 40% of them have nothing to do with the government or pro-government parties.

But we’ll see! Let’s see who will be elected and whether independent candidates will win parliamentary seats. September 11 is sort of cheking-time for Belarus – it is time to check how things are really going.

And what will you make of the statement by Central Election Commission Chairperson Lidziya Yarmoshyna, who compared opposition candidate Ales Lahvinets to … the devil? What is your attitude to such ‘demonization’ opposition?

Of course, such things do not speak well for the democratic processes in the society. Nicknaming political opponents, insulting and attacking them in this way, provoking hate speech – all these facts, of course, are bad for democracy.

And we do have a good grip of the current situation in Belarus: the country’s leadership, all the representatives of the authorities, so-called public media are not developing in a democratic way. And both the past and the contemporary history of Belarus give us proof of this. But, on the other hand, we continue to hope that certain democratic processes in Belarus are yet to begin.

“We know that the voting on September 11 will not be fair. It’s clear that the rules of transparent democracy will not be respected. I am not afraid to say that, and I did say it to Belarusian authorities” Josef Daul said. Why were such conclusions made? The OSCE has not released its report [on the election] yet.

We need to organize the work of more than 800 independent observers at the forthcoming election in Belarus. They come from many countries, including Europe, from various European institutions. It is no secret that persons support president Lukashenka will be among them as well. Let’s wait a bit and see what information, what assessment these observers will give us, what tone the OSCE report will have.

In Poland, your home country, many people must have forgotten what unfair and non-transparent elections are… But what does your experience tell: should we go to the polls or not to go? Some democratic candidates knew that they would be removed from the race but still took part in this farce. Did they hit the right path?

I was a member of ‘Solidarity’ and was very active in politics in the 80s of the last century. It was important to realize that we have no right to decide for the people, for voters, that we cannot enforce decisions. What we can really do is to observe the electoral process and seek justice and transparency. So we did it in the late 80s.

In such a way, in particular, we started to build our civil society in the late 90s, when we held, I would say, the first ever half-free election. It was a turning, a defining point in our democracy. Civil society needs to be built! And we must do it if we want to have a democratic and responsible society in our country.

Ales Silich/MS, Belsat.eu