Belarus Strongman Is Returned to Power -- For Now

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, N.B.] Times & Transcript

Let’s hope no one was foolish enough to take the Aug. 9 presidential election in the former Soviet republic of Belarus seriously, because it was as fixed as an old-time wrestling match.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Aleksandr Lukashenko was re-elected president, for the sixth time, defeating four challengers.

Lukashenko garnered over 80 per cent support, with political novice Svetlana Tikhanovskaya far behind with undert 10 per cent. She refused to accept the results, while large protests erupted in some 20 cities and were met with police attacks.

 Lukashenko has ruled the country since it passed its current constitution in 1994. Term limits were abolished in 2004, and he is Europe’s longest-serving ruler.

This is the land where the old Soviet Union has somehow managed to survive ideologically. So it’s no surprise to learn that Lukashenko, a former Soviet collective farm manager, was the only deputy in the old Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic’s Supreme Soviet to vote against the 1991 dissolution of the USSR.

Lukashenko’s authoritarian style involves controlling the main media channels, harassing and jailing political opponents, and marginalising and incarcerating independent voices.

The powerful secret police, still called the KGB, closely monitors dissidents. There have been more than 100 cases of prosecution of journalists across the country since January.

Still, this time around Lukashenko faced the biggest opposition protests for a decade. There have been hundreds of arrests in a wave of demonstrations since May.

On July 30 tens of thousands rallied in the capital, Minsk, in support of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. She stepped in to challenge Lukashenko after her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky, a popular blogger, was arrested and barred from running. Two other leading contenders, Valery Tsepkalo and Viktor Babaryko, were also prevented from contesting the election.

Tikhanovskaya joined forces with Veronika Tsepkalo, the wife of Valery Tsepkalo, and Maria Kolesnikova, campaign manager for Babaryko. He had been charged for embezzlement and fraud. The three women became the main symbol of the opposition.

The Belarusian authorities’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic has been met by severe criticism. In terms of preventive measures, Belarus remains the least active of all the countries in the region in trying to control the spread of the virus, and Lukashenko has insisted that Belarus’s economy continue to operate as normal.

Belarus has had nearly 70,000 confirmed cases and some 600 deaths. The president recommended vodka and sauna visits as protective measures. At the end of July, though, he himself contracted COVID-19.

Fearing the sudden upsurge in opposition to his reign might even result in a possible loss, Lukashenko on July 29 used one of the oldest tricks in the authoritarian playbook: He claimed to have uncovered a foreign plot to “destabilise” the country.

He claimed that 33 mercenaries with the private Russian military group Wagner had been arrested outside the capital, Minsk. Russia denied the charges against them and it cooled relations between the two countries, though Belarus has been Moscow’s closest ally since the breakup of the USSR.

Belarus was never an independent state before 1991 and its Slavic population of almost ten million is ethnically very close to that of Russia. The Russian language is used by 70 per cent of the population, and more than four-fifths are members of the Russian Orthodox faith.

Since December 2018, Russia and Belarus had been pursuing negotiations on closer integration. They have held joint military exercises and the struggling Belarus economy relies on trade with its neighbour.

Belarus exports some 40 per cent of its goods to Russia. And Moscow is also Minsk’s largest creditor: Almost 38 per cent of its debt is with Moscow.

About one-quarter of Belarus’ GDP is driven by cheap Russian gas and oil. But Moscow early this year stopped its deliveries when the two countries failed to renegotiate oil prices. On March 5, Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei declared that further  talks would make no sense before an agreement was resolved. The deliveries were resumed in April.

The arrest of the mercenaries was also aimed at Tikhanovskaya, as investigators tried to link her husband to the detainees. She has fled to Lithuania. Meanwhile, some 6,700 people have been detained since protests erupted after the vote results.