The previous head of the party from 1998 to 2018 was
Stanislav Shushkevich, who has the distinction of having been the first
head of state of the Republic of Belarus after its independence from the
Soviet Union, between 1991 and 1994. After running unsuccessfully for president in the
1994 election, he did not participate in politics again until helping to form the party in 1998. In 2004 he was not allowed to register as a candidate and so in the
2010 presidential election he was a supporter of candidate
Andrei Sannikov. == History ==