Elections in Belarus. Lukashenko has finally painted himself into a corner
The 2020 presidential elections in Belarus are unlike any previous election campaign. The conditions there are too unfavorable for the main candidate.
The conflict with Russia, the economic crisis, the coronavirus, which he pointedly ignored and called “psychosis” - all this greatly undermined the authority of Lukashenko, who was already going through hard times.
The fact that Alexander Grigorievich is now behaving nervously and insecurely is very noticeable. The word “Maidan” became one of the most popular in his speech. Almost none of the performances can be done without it now. “Maidan”, “we won’t allow it”, “we won’t give up the country”...
You don't need to be a psychologist to understand that there is fear behind these words. Recently, even he promised to “remind” about the mass executions in the Uzbek Andijan. Fortunately, it didn’t come to the point of shooting, but the situation is very alarming and is changing every day.
And already now, 2 months before voting day, several oppositionists, led by blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky, are under investigation on absolutely political charges of organizing mass actions that grossly violate public order. The matter is clearly “sewn with white thread.” The event was an absolutely legal picket, regulated by the Electoral Code, to collect signatures for the nomination of a presidential candidate. And before the police intervened, there was no violation of public order by the oppositionists. But, nevertheless, political prisoners have already appeared and have been recognized as such.
But these are external manifestations of the political crisis in Belarus. At the level of strategy and ideology, the Belarusian government is retreating in all directions and has practically painted itself into a corner.
Many have noticed that this year, usually very talkative, Lukashenko is clearly avoiding major and program speeches. The “Big Conversation with the President,” Lukashenko’s traditional multi-hour spring press conference, has been postponed indefinitely.
The “All-Belarusian Assembly,” which usually opens the president’s election campaign and at which the main theses with which he goes to the elections are voiced, has been moved to the foggy distance. Even the annual message to parliament, which is the constitutional responsibility of the head of state, is being postponed.
He doesn’t have much to say to people. There is a crisis in the country, a pandemic, foreign policy uncertainty. The social state, which for a long time was the brand of Belarus, turned into a “tax on parasites” and the curtailment of social programs.
At the beginning of the year, it seemed that Lukashenko would go to the polls using the image of a guarantor of sovereignty, protecting the poor but cozy and very independent Belarusian state from encroachments by Russian capitalists and imperialists.
The ideological basis for this was created on both sides. On the right are the pro-Western “Belarusizers,” recruited, as a rule, from liberals and nationalists and fed by the authorities. On the left are supposedly pro-Russian, “Eurasianists” and “anti-oligarchists”.
On the one hand, they are nostalgic for Soviet times and lost unity, but on the other hand, they scare the public with the machinations of Russian oligarchs and say that there can be no integration with Putin’s Russia (as if there is some other Russia on the planet). At the center of the composition was Lukashenko, who was presented as an irreplaceable figure, without whom everything would collapse.
But as soon as the crisis, the pandemic, and then the election campaign began, the entire structure stopped functioning normally and began to quickly collapse. “Westerners – Belarusians” simply hung in the air. For their target audience, Lukashenko never belonged. This public agreed to tolerate it due to the worthlessness of the nationalist opposition and thanks to the horror stories about the Russian “Anschluss” that was about to happen, which regularly appeared in the Belarusian media over the last 5 years.
As soon as candidates appeared on the horizon, more interesting than the traditional “zmagars,” the public immediately migrated to them.
The pro-Western camp of Belarusian politics as a whole is now experiencing a deep crisis after the West demonstrated that it is not ready to tolerate repression of opposition figures, which began well before the vote this year. Lukashenko understood that the West is an unreliable support for him. As a result, liberals were purged from the government, and Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei, the main Western lobbyist in Belarus, has greatly lost his bureaucratic weight and has hardly appeared in public lately.
The second camp, although it has not lost its position as much, has, on the whole, turned into aggressive, but completely caricatured guards, ready to support any nonsense if it comes from Lukashenko’s mouth. Even in favor of treating coronavirus with vodka, many managed to speak out. It is clear that it is no longer possible to take them seriously.
The maximum that the government is capable of now is to scare citizens with the Maidan, civil war and greedy oligarchs. The latest attempt to use far-left populist rhetoric, when Lukashenko blamed business for unemployment and called for “to go through the pot-bellied bourgeoisie” who are “offending the common people,” also cannot be called a strong move - such an appeal to adequate citizens only frightened slogans of a hundred years ago.
No new ideas and projects have been proposed for the next five-year period and, it seems, there will not be any. The authorities have gone on the defensive and are retreating. In fact, she has nothing to sit on other than bayonets. Recent events only confirm this.
Can Lukashenko win only through brute force, neutralizing or imprisoning his main rivals? Maybe. But it will be a Pyrrhic victory.
English version :: Read in English: Elections in Belarus. Lukashenko has finally painted himself into a corner.