According to the newly elected head of the Coordinating Committee of the Belarusan National Platform (BNP) of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (EaP CSF), BNP should answer all principles of the union of non-governmental organizations.

Let us recall that on June 25 the Report-and-Election conference of the Belarusan National Platform of the EaP CSF elected Svetlana Karaleva to be the head of the Coordinating Committee of the Belarusan National Platform.

The representative of the Belarusan Organization of Working Women (BOWW) got round the head of the HRC “Viasna” Ales Bialiatski and the head of the Homel Democratic Forum Piotr Kuzniatsou, who were also nominated for the position of the head of the Coordinating Committee of the Belarusan National Platform.

Upon the end of the conference Svetlana Karaleva in the interview with the EuroBelarus Information Service outlined the priority tasks that, according to her, are standing before the new membership of the Coordinating Committee.

“First of all, I will be working on the organizational development. We will hold a monitoring of the members of the National Platform, will be making structure, we got to get a Charter, we all should understand the rules of the game, and our budget should be transparent. I think we should answer all criteria and principles of the union of non-state organizations,” Svetlana Karaleva said.

According to her, the participants of the Belarusan National Platform are most likely to be offered a membership with fees: “We need to have some kind of contribution of the parties interested.”

Besides, as Svetlana Karaleva emphasized, “we will be building a new dialog with the European Commission and we still need to try and organize dialog with the authorities.”

As the new head of the Coordinating Committee believes, “civil society has the topics for discussion with the Foreign Ministry, and with the Ministry of Economy.” International institutions won’t be left out either, says Svetlana Karaleva; first of all, UNO and UNICEF.

However, the foremost practical task will become “the transfer of affaires, since we have an absolutely new committee, and a new professional group of people.”

Svetlana Karaleva avoids using the term “standstill” in relation to the current state of affairs in the BNP. “I disagree with that. We just need to operatively react to the swiftly changing conditions, both internal and external. No one has expected the kind of developments that we witnessed in Ukraine, with Crimea’s annexation, and with the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Of course, priorities are changing swiftly, and the situation is changing, too.”

With that Svetlana Karaleva notes that in the assessment of external danger civil society and Belarus’ leadership rather “have agreement”. “Whatever the political game is, the actions of our state in relation to the Ukrainian crisis were absolutely consistent. And I see it as the first common ground of the civil society and the state. We should speak with the state about the issues of security, Belarusization, Europeanization with the aim of defending Belarus as an independent country,” said the head of the Coordinating Committee of the Belarusan National Platform.

The new membership of the Coordinating Committee of the Belarusan National Platform includes Svetlana Karaleva, Siarhei Matskevich, Ales Bialiatski, Ihar Rynkevich, Piotr Kuzniatsou, Maryna Homich, and Vladimir Dounaev.

The members of the Coordinating Committee of the Belarusan National Platform that worked in 2014-2015 included Andrei Yahorau, Yaroslav Bekish, Aksana Shelest, Vasil Valasiuk, Natallia Vasilevich, Tatiana Poshevalova, and Ihar Rynkevich.