Entrepreneurs Keep Apolitical

Today Belarusian entrepreneurs protested in Minsk. A peaceful meeting and a demonstration involved around 2,000-3,000 people. The Belarusian battered business owners protested against the tough legal conditions imposed on them by the government. After January 1, 2009, the new regulations take affect. According to the new rules, each product an entrepreneur buys (abroad) needs to have official documents, certificates, documentation, custom clearance, etc. In addition, a private entrepreneur is no longer allowed to hire employees other than close relatives. Otherwise, the business owner is obliged to register a privately owned enterprise and face a whole bunch of additional taxes and legal hurdles.

Charter97.org
Photo by Charter97.org

Peculiarly, the protest was depoliticized, as the entrepreneurs chose to keep oppositional labels off their banners. The slogans understandably were all in Russian. The mass showed anger towards the government but chose not to get associated with the opposition, either.

Interestingly, today Alaksandr Milinkevich speaking to supporters in Homel said that the West lost faith in the Belarusian opposition. As we see, the most free-thinking class of all – the private businesspeople – do not have much faith in the Belarusian opposition, too.

Belarusian Opposition Parties and Alaksandr Milinkevich

It is sad to see what has become of the Belarusian opposition parties. Writing on my Belarusian-language blog, I usually refer to them as “mini-tusouki.” “Tusouka” means a gathering of friends when they get together to hang out, have a drink, etc. In Belarus, most opposition parties are minuscule. Sometimes, they have very similar political platforms, programs, and ideals. Why don’t they merge? Huh, because at some point they were one entity. They split up, as one ambitious person won chairmanship, another ambitious person did not admit his defeat, left the party and took his followers together with him. So another party was formed with nearly identical platform and began fiercely attacking its mother party. Then another party election comes, and the crap repeats… Hence, we have a bunch of right-wing parties and a plethora of left-wing parties. Welcome to Belarus, my dears :) .

Milinkevich 2011

In 2006, Milinkevich jumped on the political bandwagon out of the third sector. The party leaders initially endorsed him but after the elections got more and more suspicious of the new kid of the block. In the past couple of years, Milinkevich went AWOL. I mean he followed his own path which contrasted with the path established by the party leaders. As Milinkevich was shouldering his own way through, he grew as a politician. He openly confronted the party leaders in some key issues. When I saw him a couple of months back, I saw that he changed for the better. I personally think that his judgment was much more logical than that of his opponents. I think it is good he says he will run for president in 2011. I do not know if he gets the support from the opposition parties, though.

Who knows maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe the right strategy for him would be to vocally criticize the oppositional parties if appropriate. Maybe thus, he will be able to gain support of those people who lost their faith in the opposition (just like the entrepreneurs who protested today in Minsk). Even if he does, this does not guarantee him success. He needs a very good strategy. He needs to listen to what the analysts, think tanks, political scientists are saying.

A couple of weeks back, I was at the filming of Belsat’s Forum talk-show where party leaders clashed with a couple of analysts. The latter criticized the former for absence of strategy. Frankly, I thought they were unable to hear one another. Gosh, what makes people so arrogant and uncompromising? Is it the political ghetto the opposition parties found themselves in having this mesmerizing effect?

Belarus is surely a very enigmatic land. There is so much to ponder upon. Therefore this blog :) .