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Dissatisfaction with the deteriorating economic situation and the government’s lax response to the coronavirus pandemic were among the reasons that fueled the largest opposition rallies since the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Lukashenko became the first and even now sole president of independent Belarus.
Turmoil in the ruling elite and strong disagreements with Russia, Belarus’ main supporter and ally, have exacerbated Lukashenko’s challenges ahead of Sunday’s elections, during which the 65-year-old former president of the collective farm will run for office. a new mandate.
Named the “last dictator of Europe”, Lukashenko sent a clear message that he would not hesitate to reuse the power of the government and, if necessary, force it to quell any attempts by his opponents to protest the results of the presidential elections.
Election officials have already refused to register Lukashenko’s two key and promising rivals. Lukashenko will now compete with four other candidates, including 37-year-old former English teacher Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who decided to run when her husband, a blogger, was arrested and lost the opportunity to run for office. The candidate received unexpectedly strong support and tens of thousands of people turned out for her campaign rallies.
In an interview with the AP news agency, Tikhanovskaya said that the people of Belarus consider her a “symbol of change.”
“Everything has been maturing for more than 20 years,” he explained. – We were afraid all this time, and no one dared to say a word. People are now voting for a symbol of change. “
Tikhanyovskaya traveled the country, exploiting public frustration with Lukashenko’s arrogant response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the stagnant Soviet-style economy.
The president himself dismissed concerns about the coronavirus pandemic as “psychosis” and refused to impose restrictions to stop its spread. The president recommended strengthening health by drinking a glass of vodka a day, warming up in the sauna and working in the fields.
“They tell us that the virus does not exist and reject it as ‘psychosis’, and tens of thousands of Belarusians fell ill at that time,” complained Diana Golubovich, a 54-year-old lawyer who attended the Tikhaniovskaya rally in Brest, in the border with Poland.
AFP / Photo by Scanpix / Svetlana Tichanovskaya
“Suddenly, everyone realized that the state of social orientation that Lukashenko boasted did not exist,” he added.
9.5 million Belarus, which has a population of 30,000, has already identified almost 69,000 cases of coronavirus infection and the death of 585 patients. Critics have accused the government of manipulating statistics to reduce casualties.
Lukashenko said that he became infected with the coronavirus last month but showed no symptoms of COVID-19 and that the disease passed quickly, reportedly due to his high level of physical activity. The president justified his response to the outbreak by explaining that a strict quarantine would have condemned the collapse of the country’s weak economy.
Belarus, however, suffered a severe blow to its economy as its main export market, Russia, was affected by the recession caused by the pandemic, and other foreign markets also contracted. Even before the pandemic, the state-controlled Belarusian economy stalled for years, fueling public discontent.
“Lukashenko has no plans to modernize the country. He has taken away political freedoms and is now depriving people of the opportunity for economic growth,” said Valery Cepkala, a former Belarusian ambassador to the United States who planned to run for the presidency, but he fled to Russia with children last month to avoid arrest.
“This is the main reason for the protests,” he explained.
With the start of the electoral campaign, the authorities once again took forceful measures against the opposition. Since May, more than 1.3 thousand people have been detained in the country. protesters, according to the Viasna Human Rights Center. On Friday, the head of the electoral headquarters of one of the candidates was arrested at a polling station and the court sentenced him to 10 days in detention for allegedly organizing an illegal mass assembly.
Political observers also exposed divisions in Belarus’ ruling elite when some of its members first entered politics.
In addition to former ambassador V. Cepkala, Viktor Babaryka, former director of the Russian-controlled Belgazprombank bank, was preparing to challenge Lukashenko. This important presidential rival, who had important ties, was arrested in May on suspicion of money laundering and tax evasion. Babaryka herself calls this political case.
Last week, the Belarusian security services arrested 33 suspected mercenaries from a private Russian military company and charged them with organizing “mass riots”. The opposition and many independent commentators see this as an effort to increase Lukashenko’s declining popularity.
The arrest of these Russian nationals marked an unprecedented escalation of tensions between Belarus and Russia, although there have also been heated disputes in the past between the two neighbors, despite close ties.
When Russia and Belarus signed a union treaty in 1996, Lukashenko sought to use it as a tool that could become the basis for the unification of the two countries, and for him to become the successor to then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin. The situation turned in the opposite direction when Vladimir Putin became president of Russia in 2000. The Belarusian leader then began to oppose, in his opinion, the Kremlin’s efforts to seize control of Belarus.
Alexander Klaskovsky, a Minsk-based independent political expert, said he believed the Kremlin hoped the stormy election campaign would weaken Lukashenko’s power and encourage the leader to look at the integration prospects of the two countries.
“Moscow is not interested in overthrowing Lukashenko, but in weakening him as much as possible, so that after this campaign he comes out with weakened legitimacy, weakened relations with the West and a bad state of the economy,” Klaskovskis said. “A weakened and exhausted Lukashenko would be a gift to Moscow.”
Still, A. Klaskovskis predicts that election officials will declare A. Lukashenko’s victory by a wide margin.
“Lukashenko will receive about 80 percent. Voices so that his environment does not believe that the leader has weakened, the analyst speculated. – The government has enough resources and brute force to maintain power and quell protests, but has no response to the key question about the direction of Belarus’ development. Lukashenko will certainly win, but it will be Pyro’s victory. “
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