Why Lukashenka does not hide the falsification of the presidential election

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Formally, the so-called presidential elections in Belarus were announced by the evening of Friday 8 May. Few thought that the officially unrecognized epidemic would become an obstacle to the purely technical design of the next presidential term. Alexander Lukashenko, who has been permanently ruling the post-Soviet republic since 1994, when the first presidential elections were held in Belarus.

Poland postponed the presidential elections due to the pandemic, and in Belarus they were not only not postponed, but also scheduled for August - the vacation season. Having worked out the technology of extending presidential terms, now the main contender for the actually privatized top state post does not even really need a turnout. It only interferes, creating technical, organizational and psychological difficulties for those who directly provide the only correct result.

The Central Election Commission received applications for participation in the so-called presidential elections from 55 citizens. Of these, 40 were denied registration of initiative groups to collect signatures for their nomination. The other 15 will have to collect at least 100 thousand signatures to obtain candidate status.

As the practice of previous presidential campaigns shows, the head of the Central Election Commission Lydia Yermoshinagladly registers those who need to be registered, even if the number of reliable signatures is not enough. Registers even if the number of signatures submitted is significantly less than the required number. Conversely, it does not register the collected signatures for those whose registration is deemed inappropriate.

In the current presidential campaign, as in political processes for almost a quarter of a century before, Lukashenka appoints the opposition for himself, and he himself draws the figure of an “elegant victory”. He even publicly declares fraudulent presidential elections - his revelations are freely available on YouTube.

To make it easier for both the notorious "narodts" and the notorious "Westerners" to swallow the bitter pill already laid out on a silver platter, the former chairman of the state farm did not skimp on the entourage. An unprecedented number of applicants, as many as 15 candidates recognized by puppeteers, including the blogger's wife and other holders of comparable merits to the Fatherland - is this not a triumph of democracy, is it not the apotheosis of democracy?

In the land of victorious small-town nationalism, which became something of a “moral code of the builder of communism” for the generation of Lukashenka and many of his nominal rivals, according to the laws of the genre, a “pro-Russian candidate” was to appear. One was immediately identified, and not even one. Victory over him should mean the triumph of the "national idea" and a savory fig for the Kremlin.

First, someone drew on the stage Andrey Ivanov - "author of books and the project" Kremlin School of Management "and Valery Perevoshchikov - "veteran of labor and war." Both submitted applications to the CEC, and both Lydia Yermoshina refused registration on a formal basis - they were born in the RSFSR. Here an interesting principle of the secretly created legislation of the post-Soviet republic was revealed, which supplements other features that bring it closer to the “model of a presidential republic”.

Then they began to dig deeper and revealed the "pro-Russian" character of other nominal contenders for the throne. Banker under suspicion Victor Babariko - a former Komsomol leader who followed the path of capitalist success typical for the late Soviet nomenklatura. As head of Belgazprombank, for decades he supported (and not only morally) nationalists of all stripes - from the murky hangouts of amateur "non-abnormal maladzenau" to the one who beat back bows Felix Dzerzhinsky and transformed in the "dashing nineties" into anti-Soviet women and Russophobes Svetlana Alexievich … Babariko generously endowed the Belarusian "daughter" of the Russian "Gazprom" with resources of systemic "Belarusizers" and personally chanted the nationalist slogan "Long live Belarus" at official events. For years he handed out scandalous interviews, positioning himself as an opponent of the Soviet past and a supporter of small-town nationalism and libertarianism.

Babariko announced his presidential ambitions on May 12 - the same day as the aforementioned "pro-Russian" Ivanov. After the removal of the hapless Ivanov, ridiculed in the nationalist press, the focus of attention turned to Babariko. The corps of the guards of the nationalist revolution, not without the help of experienced curators, found in it an FSB agent and a conductor of the interests of the "Russian oligarchy". The formal basis is work in the Belarusian subsidiary of the Russian Gazprom.

An interesting fact: in six days, Babariko's initiative group reported on the collection of more than 10 thousand supporters. For comparison: the number of Lukashenka's initiative group is declared at 11 thousand people. The rest of the nominal applicants have initiative groups that are multiples and orders of magnitude smaller. The former nationalist banker is not so simple, says the author of the press organ of the presidential administration of Belarus, unequivocally accusing Babariko of activities in the interests of the malicious Kremlin.

Another suspect of "pro-Russian", as it were, a rival of Lukashenka in the presidential race is the former ambassador of Belarus to the United States and the former head of the Minsk High Technologies Park, a blogger and "international consultant" who was reborn on his free bread Valery Tsepkalo … He also positions himself as a libertarian, appeals to total modernization and stands on a moderately nationalist platform. However, a number of his theses on the problems of nation-building drives local zmagars to hysteria.

So, speaking on May 21 in front of the press, Tsepkalo said that Minsk was not fulfilling the political part of the agreement signed in 1999 on the formation of the Union State of Russia and Belarus. He stated: "For 20 years Belarus has demanded that Russia fulfill only the economic block."

Building on his success, he spoke about the Soviet community, noting that while interacting “with the Russians, as well as with the Ukrainians,” he never felt that they were representatives of another country, another people, another nation. Quite in the West Russian spirit, Tsepkalo sounded: “They always seemed to me to be“their people”.

That is, Tsepkalo spoke freely on topics that Lukashenka had tabooed up to the threat of imprisonment. How real such a threat is, is evidenced by the 2018 verdict in the criminal case of the Regnumites. One of those convicted in this resonant trial is an associate professor of the Department of Humanities of the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics Yuri Pavlovets … In his scientific research, he reasoned on the same topics as Tsepkalo, publishing articles in the Russian media and scientific collections. As a result, the associate professor of BSUIR was convicted under Article 130 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus (“Extremism”).

The foundations of Belarusian nationalism can be criticized Helene Carrer d'Ancausse or Per Anders Rudling, but not Valery Tsepkalo or Yuri Palovets. The fact that the ex-head of the HTP not only positions himself as a contender for the presidency, but also casts a shadow on the criminal “Belarusianization” by criticizing the authoritarian ruler, makes it possible to look at the source of authorization for such actions.

The fundamental difference between the 2020 presidential campaign and the 1994 presidential election is that more than a quarter of a century ago both main candidates were “pro-Russian”, and now there is not a single one among them - only imitation, and only in the interests of the authorities. For 26 years, Lukashenko has evolved to a staunch separatist and the practice of actualist idealism, has become a full-fledged appanage ruler with all the necessary attributes - from a harem to a court theater with the staging of the struggle of Nanai boys.

Not everything is going smoothly in this show. The victory over the "pro-Russian candidate" is not going well. Having made a bet on nationalism at the beginning of the 21st century, Lukashenka squandered all his political capital of the 90s. He lost his traditional electorate - supporters of reunification with Russia and pro-Russian citizens, having lost the sympathy of even pensioners, the directorate and the military. But even for ethnic nationalists, he did not become "their own" - he is only temporarily tolerated because of his usefulness for a new anti-Russian project.

It seems that from all the banks of this old horse they do not want to see it come out of the ferry. But he will still fight and give coal to the country in the next five years.