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Opposition leaders will probably manage to unite at last minute, Statkevich says

Belarusian opposition politicians are certainly looking for an opportunity and a platform to unite on the eve of a presidential election in the country, but they will probably manage to do that at the last minute, Mikalay Statkevich, leader of the unregistered Narodnaya Hramada Belarusian Social Democratic Party, told BelaPAN.

“Real politics is impossible in the country,” said Mr. Statkevich, who is one of the many presidential bidders in the opposition camp. “There are no real elections and real finances in the country. Politics is impossible without money. That’s why the Belarusian pro-democratic forces are largely dependent on the support of their partners outside the country. Now that the interest in Belarus has fallen, this support has decreased as well.”

The current presidential contenders “realize that they should reach an agreement [on a single candidate], but at the same time each of them hopes that he may find something and automatically gain an advantage, and then become this single candidate and further strengthen this advantage,” Mr. Statkevich said. “I think this will not be the case, at least with regard to the West, because we’ve made so many trips there, where we walked on each other’s way, and concluded that nothing will come of it. We should come to an agreement. But we’ll probably manage to come to an agreement at the very last minute, when it is clear that we can rely only on ourselves and, maybe, on some solidarity for a common candidate. This is bad, but it is better to do that later than to fail to come to an agreement and enter into discord. Actually, this is the first time we try to unite without external incentives. This should show whether there are opposition forces in Belarus. I believe they exist and I think we’ll come to terms. There will be some benefit if this happens late. If the name of the single candidate is known too early, two months will be enough for Belarusian Television to utterly discredit him. If it becomes known late, the authorities will have less time for that.”