Page 64 - BNE_magazine_07_2020

64 Opinion
bne July 2020
Effectively, Belarus has ended up in a deadlock. The old foundations of its economy are long gone but no new formula has been found to replace them. The attempts of the last five years to improve relations with the West have returned almost nothing, as Lukashenko still refuses to make any democratic reforms. For many years, Belarusian authorities have been cherishing hopes that China could replace Russia as a key partner and donor, but Beijing hasn’t shown much interest. Basically, Belarus’ only visible achievement from the past ten years is increasing debt.
At the same time, all available surveys show that the absolute majority of Belarusians want market reforms.
So do Lukashenko’s ministers, whom he openly accuses
of being ‘marketeers’ and ‘crypto-liberals’. However, all liberalisation and modernisation attempts are being blocked by Lukashenko, who insists that the key to recovery is more discipline and a wartime mobilisation. Because of all this, Lukashenko’s popularity in the last four years has been oscillating around 20-30%. Not much, but enough if you control the Election Committee and have no real rivals.
But then came the coronavirus (COVID-19). Lukashenko
not just completely disregarded it, he accused victims of being not healthy enough or eating cheap low-quality food. He advised people to simply work more, play ice hockey and drink vodka. The authorities openly ridiculed people for wearing facemasks or taking other precautionary measures. It was not the state but ordinary people who were collecting money and providing struggling medics with necessary equipment. The state said that there is no virus, just a ‘psychosis’.
For many people, it is reminiscent of the way the Soviet authorities treated the Chernobyl disaster, Belarus’
national trauma (Belarus was the worst-affected country
by the disaster with more than 20% of its territory still contaminated). With more than 60,000 COVID-19 cases, Belarus has one of the worst figures per capita in the world. The last remaining part of the social contract between Belarusians and Lukashenko – limited freedoms in exchange for security – has been irreparably broken.
And now, against this backdrop, a presidential race has started. It was supposed to be just another formality to secure Lukashenko his sixth term in office. Lukashenko, his life-long sparring partner Gaidukevich, and a few opposition no-names on the ballot – a repeat of the plan which worked out perfectly in 2015. But something went wrong. For the first time in Lukashenko’s career, not one, but three strong opposition candidates stepped forward.
The first is Sergei Tsikhanovski, one of the country’s most popular political bloggers. A straightforward fellow who became extremely popular with Lukashenko’s former supporters, blue-collar workers and people from provincial towns. He doesn’t beat around the bush, simply saying that elections in Belarus are so rigged that it makes no sense to participate in them. He has said that he wants to use this
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Left to right: Tikhanovski, Babariko and Tsepkalo (tut.by, probusiness.io)
election campaign to ignite anti-Lukashenko protests all across the country to force Lukashenko out.
The second candidate is Viktor Babariko, who is perhaps the wealthiest man in the country, whose fortune is not derived from Lukashenko’s goodwill. For 20 years he has been CEO of Belgazprombank, Belarus’ largest private bank. Even though the bank is owned by Russia’s Gazprom, Babariko can hardly be seen as a pro-Russian candidate. He is extremely popular among Belarusians for his art patronage and support of various cultural initiatives aimed at the revival of the Belarusian language and culture (as opposed to Lukashenko, who openly says that the Belarusian language is ugly and still tries to preserve his small Soviet Union).
The third is Valery Tsepkalo, a former ambassador to the US who had worked alongside Lukashenko for over 20 years but fell out with the regime in 2016. He is also very well known in Belarus for creating the IT Park in Minsk – Belarus’ Silicon Valley, and the only sector of the economy that has been growing in the last decade.
We don’t know the exact level of their support, as political surveys are banned, even online polls. But it is extremely likely that any of these three would beat Lukashenko in a fair election. This is once again a new situation for Belarus, where, although all previous presidential elections have been severely rigged by the Central Election Commission, Lukashenko has always been far ahead of the competition (instead of the official 83% he had 40-60% depending on the year). He has always been so confident in his position that he openly admitted to having ordered the Election Commission to falsify the election of 2006.
Now that Lukashenko is behind three other candidates, he
is clearly worried that the usual falsifications might not be enough, especially since Babariko has launched a campaign called “Fair People” aimed at covering all polling stations with independent commission members, or at least observers.
If successful, Babariko’s initiative could massively limit the room for falsification.
The situation is so worrying for Lukashenko that he urgently had to dismiss the entire government two months ahead of the election, as its key ministers, including the Prime Minister Sergei Rumas, were known for having very good relations with Viktor Babariko.