How the Belarusian protests can end

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

The Belarusian authorities found themselves in a situation of the narrowest room for maneuver in their history. Society is angry, the economy has been stagnating for ten years, reforms are scary, relations with the West are preparing to freeze, and in order to get Russian support, sovereignty must be shared. Therefore, now the most important question for Lukashenka is money, which is time.

The Belarusian elections ended with the usual official figures, but with a completely new reaction from society. It is not yet clear how the country will get out of the political crisis, but it will definitely not be the same as before.

The strongest street clashes in the history of the country with at least one victim and dozens of seriously injured people will go down in history as a symbol of the fall of Alexander Lukashenko's regime. There is no obvious way to glue the rift between his power and, in many ways, the majority of Belarusians.

Close all valves

The Belarusian authorities have been fertilizing the ground for today's protests since the beginning of the year. Having shown herself passive and indifferent during the pandemic, she launched the process of politicizing a huge mass of previously apathetic people.

The widespread sense of Lukashenko's low approval rating and the emergence of bright and fresh alternative candidates only fueled people's hopes for peaceful change this year. It is impossible to steal a victory from the majority, said the most popular opposition candidate, Viktor Babariko, before his arrest.

The cult of non-violence and law-abidingness has always been inherent in the Belarusian political culture. Even at unauthorized processions, the opposition traditionally waited for a green traffic light. But the laws of political physics are difficult to deceive. If all the valves are sequentially closed to release the protest energy, at some point it will burst out with the force of an explosion. This is exactly what the Belarusian authorities have been doing throughout the election campaign.

Even before the elections, more than a thousand people were detained at various rallies, two hundred went through administrative arrests.

Three popular candidates - Sergei Tikhanovsky, Viktor Babariko and Valery Tsepkalo - were not allowed to register and get on the ballots. The first two are now in jail on criminal charges, the third managed to leave the country. Many popular bloggers and politicians with protest experience ended up in prison.

People began to enroll en masse in the electoral commissions, but they were not allowed there, having formed commissions almost entirely of state employees and officials. Independent observers were not allowed to the polling stations under the pretext of a pandemic. Those who were too persistent were detained by dozens right next to the polling stations.

Due to the extreme politicization, the wave of repression has embittered too many Belarusians. When they first came to politics or started reading about it, masses of people received a slap in the face from the authorities much stronger than even the titular opposition received in recent years.

Protest of anger

Because of such a campaign, protests were inevitable, even if the authorities announced that Lukashenko had won a modest 60%, rather than the traditional 80%. But even the work of the electoral vertical was not without failures, which in themselves are a symptom of a serious change in the atmosphere in Belarusian society.

The election commissions, made up of proven loyalists, with clear instructions from above and without independent observers over the soul, still sometimes betrayed the victory of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. There have already been photos of at least a hundred such protocols from all over the country.

It is unlikely that any of these people expected that their act, fraught with dismissal, would lead to a change in the president. They just for some reason, without saying a word, decided that here and now it is more important to be on this side of history, and not on the other.

The protests of the following days were not a riot of the urban middle class, poor outback, hard workers, nationalists or football fans - everyone was there. The actions took place in more than 30 cities and almost everywhere ended in harsh suppression.

As often happens in protracted street clashes, security officials increase the degree of violence if they see resistance, excitement, or a dangerous mass of disaffected for themselves. Therefore, for the first time in the history of the country, rubber bullets, stun grenades and water cannons were used. Military special forces and border guards were involved in the crackdown.

At least one person died. Hundreds in hospitals. From all over the country there are reports of overcrowded detention centers, beatings of detainees and bystanders in the streets.

Protesters periodically fought back. On several occasions they tried to build barricades, in some cases they threw bottles with a combustible mixture and knocked down riot policemen with cars.

But the switched off Internet, the blocked center of Minsk, the absence of leaders and a clear superiority in power on the side of the authorities initially made it impossible to repeat the Maidan. This is a protest of mass anger, not a campaign to overthrow the government.

Personalistic authoritarian regimes like the Belarusian one almost never give up without a fight and blood. There is no Politburo, the ruling party, any influential parliament, clans and oligarchs, a separate military class - all that is needed to split the elites under the pressure of society.

Moreover, there were no leaders or a center on the part of the opposition to which the vacillating officials could swear allegiance. It is a mistake to think that Svetlana Tikhanovskaya or her headquarters had anything to do with the protests.

The gathering points for the people were appointed by the administrators of the popular opposition telegram channels. The fact that they are abroad was an important argument that the regime actively used when convincing its employees and supporters that the protests were an external provocation.

The lack of recognition on the other side of legitimacy was the driving force of both sides. The protesters saw the usurper and his punishers in front of them. Power is by hooligans and lost sheep, used by manipulators. The security officials decided that since they could not get to the puppeteers, they should raise the price of protest for the locals as much as possible.

Loss of trust

It is not yet possible to predict unambiguously how this political crisis will end. If the protests fizzle out under the pressure of the security forces - and this looks like a likely scenario today - the authorities are unlikely to refrain from a revealing retaliatory flogging. Minsk would not like Western sanctions, but the urge for reaction is stronger.

Dozens of criminal cases have been opened, not all of them can simply evaporate as unnecessary. You will almost certainly want to take revenge on civil society and journalists who have "disbanded" over the past five years of relative thaw.

There is a grudge against the members of the election commissions who did not follow the orders, the workers of several state-owned enterprises who tried to declare a strike, the resigned leading state TV and security officials. It is not known how many cases of grassroots sabotage and reports of dismissal from the authorities did not make it to the media.

No matter how the authorities tried to convince themselves and their audience that the protests were just foreign dirty tricks, this campaign and its brutal end inflicted a serious psychological trauma on Lukashenka. In his perception, the ungrateful people did not justify the trust of the authorities.

The trauma to society will be even greater. The point is not only that blood was shed, but the authorities brought military special forces and water cannons to the streets. Five to seven thousand detainees are tens of thousands of shocked relatives and friends. Now they have to see all the delights of political justice.

The geographic scope of the repression has also affected an unusually high number of people. Due to the fact that protests often took place in residential areas, people from balconies watched firing from pump-action guns, explosions of stun grenades and beating passers-by with truncheons right outside their entrances. This happened in dozens of cities, including those where not only protests, but also their own riot police have never been.

Collaboration with the authorities, working for them will now become more toxic than before. One should expect not only a wave of political and student emigration, but also the exfoliation of professionals from different parts of the state apparatus.

The Belarusian authorities, unlike the Russian ones, have never had money for expensive specialists. Now it will be more difficult with ideological motivation. This means that the quality of public administration will continue to degrade.

These elections are a blow to Lukashenka's legitimacy not only in the world, but also inside the country. Stories about falsifications and rewritten protocols are no longer a topic of conversation only between oppositionists and human rights activists. Now this is known and said by those for whom all their life before that politics was on the periphery of consciousness.

Left without the support or at least the tacit loyalty of the majority, without the economic resources to cajole it, the regime will increasingly rely on the security forces.

Already today, people from law enforcement agencies are heading the government and the presidential administration. After these elections, people in uniform will not only determine Lukashenka's picture of the world, preparing almost all reports on his desk, but also understand that the authorities owe their survival to them.

This could be the prologue to reformatting the regime. Untouchable security officials can gradually become irreplaceable. And then feel that they have the right not only to carry out other people's orders, but also to the right to vote in their adoption.

The Belarusian authorities found themselves in a situation of the narrowest room for maneuver in their history. Society is angry, the economy has been stagnating for ten years, reforms are scary, relations with the West are preparing to freeze, and in order to get Russian support, sovereignty must be shared. Therefore, now the most important question for Lukashenka is money, which is time.