LEFTIST OPPOSITION PARTIES UNITED, BUT BARELY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 MINSK 000209

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/12/17
TAGS: PGOV PHUM BO
SUBJECT: LEFTIST OPPOSITION PARTIES UNITED, BUT BARELY

Ref: A. Minsk 177

Q B. 06 Minsk 978
Q C. Minsk 187

Summary
--------------


1. (C) Three opposition political parties have formed a
Union of Leftist Parties as a means of combining their
resources and advancing their social-democratic economic
agenda at the next democratic congress. Recently, however,
high-level members of Aleksandr Kozulin's Social Democratic
Party and the Women's Party have communicated to Emboffs
their deep distrust of fellow union partner and opposition
communist leader Sergey Kalyakin's motives and rumored
sources of support. Nevertheless, all three parties remain
committed to convening a democratic congress of opposition
parties with or without de facto opposition leader
Aleksandr Milinkevich's participation. End summary.

Despite GOB Roadblocks, BPC Leads Charge toward Union
-------------- --------------


2. (U) On December 17, 2006, during a convention in the
Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, the opposition Belarusian
Party of Communists (BPC) formed a Union of Leftist Party
(ULP) with the opposition Belarusian Social Democratic
Party "Gramada" (BSDP) and the "Nadzeya" women's party.
Having brought more than half of the convention's
delegates, BPC Chair Sergey Kalyakin announced that he
envisaged the leftist union as the core movement within the
pro-democracy opposition coalition that would champion a
socio-economic agenda at the coalition's next congress (ref
A). According to Kalyakin, uniting Belarus' opposition
socialist parties would enable them to highlight their
ideological differences with the Lukashenko regime.
Seeming to anticipate the GOB's efforts to block the
union's creation, Kalyakin denounced the GOB's registration
process as political and vowed to find a legal
"organizational form" that would achieve ULP goals. [Note:
Unsurprisingly, Belarus' Ministry of Justice on February 16
formally denied the ULP legal registration ostensibly
because its founding convention delegates had been
appointed and not elected. End note.]

BSDP Needs BPC Support, But Has Second Thoughts
-------------- --


3. (C) Despite public statements of shared objectives with
the other two ULP members, BSDP leaders have privately
shared with us their true interests in a union with
Kalyakin's party. BSDP Deputy Chair and Kozulin attorney
Igor Rynkevich recently noted that his party views its
alliance with BPC as a means to push the democratic
opposition coalition to convene a democratic congress
sooner rather than later. He also noted that such an
alliance would foster cooperation with labor unions and
smaller leftist parties, such as Nadzeya ("Hope"),that
would likely send delegates to the Congress. BSDP Deputy
Chair Vladimir Nistyuk also revealed to Poloff that his
party was practically bankrupt and that the BSDP leadership
had agreed to join the leftist union to gain Kalyakin's
financial assistance. Nistyuk noted that Kalyakin claims
(and demonstrates) that he has received "enormous amounts
of money" from outside sources. [Note: We have heard this
claim from many activists within and outside of the
coalition; Kalyakin has spoken to us directly about his
access to sources of support. End note.]


4. (C) However, Nistyuk and other BSDP national leaders
have heard from their rank and file that Kalyakin is using
his resources mainly to recruit BSDP members into BPC.
BSDP Youth Wing leader Dmitriy Kruk described the ULP as
Kalyakin's possible effort at a hostile takeover of BSDP.
Rynkevich told Poloff that Kozulin shared Nistyuk's and
Kruk's misgivings about the leftist union. However,
Rynkevich downplayed the ULP's day-to-day cooperation and
described the union as merely a formalization of BPC-BSDP
2006 regional cooperation agreements during the recent
local election campaign (ref B).

Nadzeya Seeks Union with BSDP, But Wary of BPC
-------------- -


5. (C) On March 1, Nadzeya Chair Yelena Yeskova confirmed
that Kalyakin and other senior BPC members had begun
lobbying her to join the leftist union even before she had
been formally elected to her position in September 2006.
Expressing strong reservations about Kalyakin's motives and

MINSK 00000209 002 OF 002


his sources of support, Yeskova confessed to Poloff that
her party consented to join the leftist union only because
of the opportunity to join with BSDP. She articulated that
the vast majority of her party members much more closely
identify with BSDP's more centrist social democratic agenda
than with BPC's more radical ideology. She added that
Kozulin and his wife, Irina Kozulina, were extremely
popular among Nadzeya members, who regard the leftist union
as a way to support Kozulin and his agenda at the
opposition congress.

All Roads Lead to Congress (with or without Milinkevich)
-------------- --------------


6. (C) While advocating the addition of women's issues to
that agenda, Yeskova generally shared Kozulin's view that
the congress' principal goal should be a common opposition
declaration on the illegitimacy of Lukashenko's presidency
and the drafting of a short common opposition plan, or
"Little Constitution," for the transformation of Belarus
from a totalitarian state to a liberal democracy (ref C).
Moreover, she agreed with her ULP counterparts that the
congress should convene with or without de facto opposition
leader Aleksandr Milinkevich.


7. (C) However, unlike Kozulin and Kalyakin, Yeskova would
not endorse opposition Belarusian Popular Front (BPF) Chair
Vintsuk Vyachorka's compromise plan to encourage
Milinkevich to participate in the Congress by naming him as
Head of the coalition's Political Committee and rotating
the coalition's executive body leadership among the party
leaders. Yeskova predicted that the BPF scheme would
worsen the coalition's already deep divisions by
simultaneously bolstering Milinkevich's and Kalyakin's
leadership claims.

Comment
--------------


8. (C) On its face, the leftist union is an effort by the
parties to speak with one voice as they advance an ideology
along the lines of EU socialist parties. Kalyakin is
clearly interested in trying to use the leftist forces as a
prop for greater prominence in the democratic coalition.
Regarding the opposition left forces, once the congress has
concluded, the leftist bloc may prove itself to be a union
of convenience.

Stewart