On 26 April 2013 Belarusian authorities and the opposition marked the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster: each in its own way. Alexander Lukashenka went on a trip to the polluted areas as did opposition leaders Anatol Liabedzka and Vital...
The Belarusian media more and more look like barricade journalism. The state media fiercely fight their non-state colleagues and vice versa. Endless clichés, mutual accusations and the language of hatred often leave little space for decent journalism. The lack of...
On 15 February 2013, Juriy Zisser, founder of the most popular Belarusian website TUT.by, and Natalya Radina, the chief-editor of popular oppositional website Charter97.org, publicly quarrelled in Vienna. This incident revealed a much deeper split in Belarusian society than many...
Politicians in social networks, civil society in politics, geopolitical preferences of Belarusians and the state of small business were, among other topics, in the focus of Belarusian analysts over the last few weeks. Belarusian Politicians Have Nothing to Catch...
Belarusian experts carried out a lively debate on the role of civil society and intellectual in contemporary Belarus, revelations of Zianon Pazniak and the situation with doing business in Belarus among other topics. Civil Society: To the Ghetto or the...
Polish analysts focus on the results of the recent parliamentary elections and their consequences for Belarus. Experts also take a closer look at the opposition and its performance before and during the elections. Since the economic indicators provide some worrisome...
The Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies sparked angry opposition reactions with its fresh opinion polls covering recent parliamentary elections. Former presidential candidate Andrej Sannikov was granted political asylum in the UK. Mediakritika published top 10 Belarusian hits...
The Belarusian authorities ran the elections taking no chances to ensure the maintenance of the political status quo. Opposition candidates who offered even the hint of a threat were not registered, some TV debates were not broadcast to prohibit...
The Parliamentary election of 2012 never had the ingredients to be transformative, but it did offer the chance for the opposition to present a credible platform to the population - and to seek to create space for issues to...
The 2012 parliamentary campaign election campaign ended in defeat of all political actors in Belarus. On the one hand, the Belarusian opposition was unable to mobilise society. On the other hand, the authorities received the expected results from a made up...
The international observers monitoring the parliamentary elections in Belarus present their preliminary post-election statement at a news conference in Minsk. The international observation is a common endeavour involving the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and the Parliamentary...
Today's parliamentary elections are the simplest for Belarusian election committees. Because the majority of the opposition has boycotted the elections, the election committees have almost no need to rig the votes. In any event, when neither the observers nor...
It may sound surprising but the Iranian political system is more democratic and pluralistic than its Belarusian counterpart. To build a democratic state Belarus needs a complete overhaul, while Iran needs just light repairs. Anti-Western rhetoric united these regimes but...
In about a month, Belarusians will vote in parliamentary elections. Although parliamentary elections have become a mere formality since the late 1990s, each time they arise the Belarusian opposition actively discusses whether it makes sense to participate in them. The...
