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The campaign against Lukashenko, who has led the country since 1994, has increased public interest in the elections, which are often a formality in Belarus.
In addition, she was prosecuted by Tikhanovsky, 41, who faces a prison sentence.
He became popular by creating the YouTube channel Strana dlia žizni (Country for Life), which has some 230,000 members. subscribers. On this channel, Tikhaniovsky uploads videos on corruption, the judiciary and police abuse in Belarus.
He also invented a new insult to Lukashenko, calling the President a “cockroach.”
“It has been 26 years since the dictator ruled the country with incompetence and criminal negligence,” Tikhaniovsky said in a May 7 video that he traveled the country for years and interacted with ordinary people.
“2020 is a year of change, stop for the cockroach!” He said.
However, he did not present documents to register as a presidential candidate since he was arrested early last month for participating in an unauthorized protest.
Scanpix / AP Photo / Alexander Lukashenko
Last month, the country’s Central Election Commission (CRC) refused to register an initiative group that could nominate Tikhaniovsky for president.
However, the CRK registered the initiative group of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of S. Tikhanyovsky.
She says she has already collected 100,000. signatures that would allow him to run in the August 9 elections.
However, the decision on whether Tikhanovskaya will be able to challenge Lukashenko will be made by the CRC.
S. Tikhaniovsky was arrested
The Belarusian leader, once nicknamed “the last dictator of Europe,” has already said he will not.
“Our society is not ready to vote for a woman,” Lukashenko said last week.
The day this presidential statement came out, Tikhanovsky collected signatures in Grodno to support his wife’s campaign.
Two police officers approached him, and one of them crashed into a crowd of people, seen in a video recording the incident. Tichanovsky was abruptly arrested on charges of “violence” against these police officers.
If Tihanovsky’s guilt is admitted, he faces up to six years in prison. The blogger himself and his followers claim that he was “screwed” to get rid of a political opponent.
On Wednesday, the police searched S. Tikhaniovsky’s apartment and summer house and stated that 900,000 people were confiscated. Dollars
But Tikhanyovskaya says that his family has never had so much money.
Since 1994, the Belarusian opposition has failed to gain political power. Several members of the opposition spent a long time in prison, and no independent candidate entered parliament during the 2019 elections.
“Voice of Mistrust” by Lukashenko
This year, the opposition’s actions are markedly different from the current president’s traditional Soviet approach to the campaign, which he conducts by visiting factories and farms.
The Belarusians, who have been waiting for hours to support opposition candidates with signatures, are actually expressing a vote of no confidence in Lukashenko, said Alexander Klaskovsky, an analyst at the private news agency BelaPan.
“Sergei Tykhanovsky’s arrest only set fire to the fire,” he told AFP.
Police arrested dozens of opposition activists last weekend, including Lukashenko’s former rival in the 2010 election, Nikolai Statkevich. He spent several years in prison after those elections.
Some of this year’s opposition candidates are from the seat, such as art patron Viktor Babarika, a former banker who ran a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom.
Babarika strongly criticizes the country’s economic system, which is largely controlled by the state and which is becoming a tool in energy and political conflicts with a much larger neighbor, Russia.
Lukashenko, for his part, accused Babarik of making money fraudulently and hinted that he was being financed by Moscow, which wanted to “privatize” Belarus.
The third government critic to be involved in the electoral process is former high-ranking diplomat Valery Cepkala.
According to analyst Artiomas Šraibmanas, it would be unexpected if V. Babarika and V. Cepkala were not arrested after the elections.
According to him, since Lukashenko came to power in 1994, “almost all members of the Belarusian elite who left the opposition … have not escaped from prison.”
If his campaign ends differently this year, “it will be a precedent,” Schraibman told AFP.
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