The political scientist Andrei Yahorau has suggested a number of criteria for distinguishing real political players from the fake ones among the future political players of 2015.

Now the circle of future participants of the political campaign in the following season that is unfolded on the threshold of the presidential elections of 2015 is already fixed, noted the director of the Centre for European Transformation, political scientist Andrei Yahorau in the talk with the EuroBelarus Information Service.

"There is hardly any point in waiting some absolutely new forces, movements from below that would suddenly appear during this campaign. Most probably, situation will be developed with those forces that are present on the political arena today", assumes the expert.

At this conjuncture, he mentioned, it will be important for the voters and active citizens to differentiate real political players from the fake ones. For that Andrei Yahorau suggests using 6 criteria:

1. The formation of coalitions and blocks of political forces

"It is obvious that any of the political subjects doesn’t possess enough amount of resources to win in the 2015 campaign alone", mentions the political scientist. That is why those forces that exist today should enter coalitions or associations so that to expect solution of at least some political goals.

Together with it, as the necessity of coalition formation today is obvious to everyone who keeps a close watch on political life of the country, then not only those who intend seriously oppose political regime in Belarus will enter the coalitions, notes the expert. Certain political structures will try to form fake coalitions that imitate consolidation simply to create an illusion of a serious step. "This fiction will be necessary to merely hold those places that these political forces occupy on the political field", explained the interlocutor.

In order to check the verity of the political subjects’ intentions one should address the next criterion.

2. Public nomination of united leaders’ pool

Andrei Yahorau emphasized that only a consolidated team of leaders will guarantee the realism of the association. "This won’t necessarily be one leader, and this will not be a united nominee that often substitutes the real consolidation with the procedure of quasi-legitimate choices", specified the expert.

"During the previous years the fictitious nature of the coalition revealed through the fact that all its constituent structures were given equal status regardless of whether it was a large party or a tiny one of the three members. All the leaders in the coalition were given equal status regardless of the political weight. It disorganized the coalition, disabled its functioning", - noted the political scientist.

In order to assess whether the nomination of the public leaders’ pool is a real step or not, the expert recommends to use the following criterion: the number of the leaders’ positions should be less than the number of the participants of the coalition. "Notably, if the coalition will comprise five structures, then they should have no more than three leaders. It means that the leaders will have to coordinate whom them nominee as public persons of new union among themselves", believes the interlocutor.

3. Organization boundary-spanning

As Andrei Yahorau noted, "when the structures participating in the union aren’t striving to hold leader positions, separate structures, organization brands and other attributes of separate existence at all costs, - only then the realism and seriousness will increase".

In a real coalition the mixing of the former structures should take place as well as the boundary-spanning: "It can be expressed in the new name of the union (which is, in general, not of a principle), in personification of this union in the names of the public leaders’ names, in the prospective - in the merger of the structures and technological headquarters".

4. Public presentation of strategies and action programs

The political scientist explained the importance of this criterion in the following way: "Without publicly presented strategy we, i.e. the voters and activists, won’t know what the politicians are going to do and won’t be able to check whether they are doing what they have promised to do. Only publicly presented strategies will allow us to evaluate whether they are heading where they claimed to go or it doesn’t go beyond talks and manifests".

5. Common actions

"But it is not enough to declare a strategy, one should proceed according to it", noted Andrei Yahorau. The formed coalition should switch from declarative common steps to the active political actions. And to speak about the presence of a serious political player, these actions should bring appreciable, noticeable and measurable results, highlighted the interlocutor.

6. The presence of the minimal victories

"By the beginning of real conflict with the state on the threshold of elections this coalition should possess some minimal victories, not necessarily large-scale, but representing real victories or real results that will mean that the coalition established itself as fact", noted Andrei Yahorau.

For instance, if the associations have a goal to stop government actions on cutting down a park, then these actions should be stopped, and the park should be saved. If the goal is to become famous and achieve positive rating as coalition leaders of 30 per cent in 5 months, then these indices should be achieved and registered by the independent sociological research.

"If there is nothing of that kind, then all the common actions are the imitation of action. And without such results and victories nothing guarantees realism and seriousness of intentions of such coalition or union even if they collect 100 thousand signs, hold thousands of civil campaigns or organize 50 public hearings on some subject. We need only real victories and real results", noted the political scientist.

Andrei Yahorau emphasized that only provided that all the 6 criteria are fulfilled that the political subjects will have "some chances to win or at least to have a real political campaign in 2015".