Deutsche Welle: Lukashenka loses credibility
- 29.09.2010, 9:33
The fear of losing power makes the Belarusian dictator further violate laws.
As Deutsche Welle reports, the Central Election Commission of Belarus (CEC) registered most of initiative groups of presidential aspirants. The loyalty demonstrated by the CEC gave rise to statements about unprecedented liberalism of the running campaign. However, Alyaksandr Lukashenka public remarks indicate that he is not going to give his power to anyone after 17 years of rule.
Role-playing game
At the first stage of the Belarusian presidential campaign16 opponents, among them 8 representatives of the opposition, entered the struggle against Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s team. The remaining 8 potential candidates haven’t demonstrated their political activity before.
Some experts suppose it is due to the absence of fear in the society. However, it’s soon become clear who is real opponent of the authorities and who is just playing card creating parallel structures to simulate competition.
Open secret
The team of the Belarusian leader stands apart from all 17 registered initiative groups. The campaign office of Alyaksandr Lukashenka running for a forth term is headed by minister of education Alyaksandr Radzkou, who is also in charge of White Rus (Belaya Rus), the biggest republican public association.
It means that members of this in fact ruling party will take active part in gathering signatures to propose Lukashenka as a presidential candidate. Founded with the help of administrative leverage in 2004, ahead of the referendum on amendments to the Constitution, White Rus association unites more than 100,000 people, most of them executive officers and public workers holding fix-term contracts.
That is the reason why almost all potential candidates were admitted to the first stage of struggling for the presidential post. Opposition members will fail to gather signatures in favour of their candidates at plants, as ideological officers won’t allow them to enterprises. But representatives of White Rus association will meet no barriers.
Ideological officers will open doors at any time to activists of the pro-presidential association. Officers of different institutions under a threat of dismissal and students under a threat of kicking out from universities will again be made to support nomination of Alyaksandr Lukashenka as a presidential candidate.
This simple trick was successfully used during previous election campaigns and seems to have success this time too. So, “the unprecedented liberalism” displayed by the Central Election Commission at a stage of registration of initiative groups, as said by CEC spokesman Mikalai Lazavik, is likely to be limited only by this statement.
If a liar tells the truth…
The presidential campaign has a very tight schedule. Now election territorial and polling station commissions are being formed. It may happen that there will be no time to protest against absence of opponents of the authorities in the composition of the commissions. The opposition will throw its forces to gather 100,000 signatures and promoting several potential presidential candidates. In fact, even more signatures are needed in case the Central Election Commission doesn’t recognize 15% of them.
Non-recognition of a part of signatures is one of administrative leverages the authorities may use to reduce the number of Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s competitors and preserve at the same time an appearance of competition. The administrative leverage is still powerful. Though the condition of official Minsk at the start of the election is not perfect due to a conflict with Moscow, Lukashenka more fears to lose his power than that the election results won’t be recognized by the international community.
That’s why, however liberal the authorities may look, all reports on free and fair election cannot be trusted. When the head of state says “the key to the election is in the people’s pocket”, it means nothing else than a signal to officials – the president needs another “elegant victory”.