President Lukashenko attempted to put on a show of electoral democracy, but his suppression of recent protests tells the true story of politics in Belarus
For a moment during the recent presidential campaign in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, I felt like I was covering a school board election in small-town America. The scene was an auditorium at a Minsk ballet academy, where young boys in unitards lingered in the hallway. On stage stood Victor Tereshenko, one of nine men running to challenge the incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko. About 20 people sat in the room, wearing expressions ranging from overly enthusiastic to moderate disinterest. There was no media to cover the event, just someone recording the talk with a digital camera.
Welcome to democracy in Belarus, which President Lukashenko has ruled since 1994. Over the weekend, he won a sham election that will grant him five more years in
Random reporter
I went to Belarus just before the vote. I think Europe has to share the blame for the tragic outcome of the vote. Its informal agreement of support to Lukashenko’s rule in exchange for some liberalisation of the campaign has created this strange mix of optimism and incredulity – how can EU possibly deal with ‘the last dictator of Europe’?! No one anticipated the brutal outcome, which, it seems, has become such because Lukashenko got a (sudden) better deal with the Russian shop. Thus people ended up in jail partly because they thought there would be at least a chance of speaking out without being trampled upon. How sad to see them all decieved again. Perhaps, they were taken hostage in exchange for some favours from EU now that the previous ‘liberalisation’ deal has collapsed. Europe can still chose not to buy petrol and other fuels from Belarus thus depriving Minsk regime of significant hard currency revenue. But I wonder if it has guts to fight, given all the internal EU problems.