We are pleased to announce the return of our “Election Reports”:https://themonkeycage.org/election_reports/ series with what I am hoping will be the first of two reports on the Belarusian Presidential Election. This first report comes to us from Ludmila Krytynskaia, who holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and is an independent analyst in London. Parts of this report have also appeared in an article Krytynskaia wrote for “Foreign Policy”:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/17/lukashenkos_nine_lives on December 17th.
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Last Sunday’s presidential election in Belarus produced the same outcome as elections in Belarus have for the past 16 years. For the fourth time in a row, Alexander Lukashenko — dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” — won the vote. According to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), Lukashenko was reelected with 79.67 percent of the vote, with voter turnout of 90.66 percent. Thus, officially Lukashenko’s popular mandate still holds, approximating that of the previous presidential election in 2006 when he purportedly received 83.6 percent of the vote.
According to the official results released by the CEC, Lukashenko’s runner up in Sunday’s election, former deputy foreign minister Andrei Sannikov, received a mere 2.56 percent of the vote. The other eight candidates standing in the election supposedly garnered less than 2 percent each, while 6.47 percent of voters chose to vote against all candidates. Notably, the vote margins for the three leading opposition candidates were significantly lower than their approval ratings reported in pre-election surveys.
Lukashenko’s claim to yet another landslide victory was immediately challenged by thousands of opposition supporters gathering in Minsk’s central square on the night of the election. Opposition leaders maintained that both president Lukashenko’s running for a fourth term and his purportedly resounding re-election in the first round were illegitimate.
The government’s subsequent “crackdown on the protesters”:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/world/europe/20belarus.html?ref=Belarus/ — including the arrests of over 600 demonstrators including several presidential candidates — has received worldwide media coverage and has been widely condemned. In response, Lukashenko is now trying to convince the international community, as he did in a December 20 “interview with Euronews”:http://www.euronews.net/2010/12/20/lukashenko-slams-belarus-election-riots/, that the violent post-election crackdown on protesters was justified because the demonstrators’ actions on the night of the election were unlawful.
“Geopolitical concerns”:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/17/Lukashenkos_nine_lives/ and concerns about the legitimacy of the election figured prominently in the run-up to the election. A paradoxical twist this campaign season was that Lukashenko, who has long thumbed his nose at the international community, in October promised the European Union a democratic election and expressed for the first time his desire that the European Union recognize the results of the election as legitimate. This concern largely was driven by the deterioration of Lukashenko’s relationship with Moscow, as well as the dire condition of the Belarusian state-controlled economy. However, a last minute truce and beneficial oil export deal with Moscow may have untied the hands of the Belarusian regime with regard to the opposition during the last few days and after the election.
The pre-election period was marked by several notable positive political developments in Belarus. Public spaces were made available for rallies, protests, and meetings with voters. Opposition presidential candidates were not been arbitrarily disqualified from running against Lukashenko and were permitted to accept individual campaign contributions. And for the first time in the history of Belarus, a live televised debate between the presidential candidates was held, although Lukashenko chose not to appear.
Notwithstanding improvements in the ability of opposition candidates to run for office and to meet with voters, their access to the media and the composition of precinct electoral commissions were overwhelmingly skewed in favor of Lukashenko. According to the “statement of preliminary findings and conclusions by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Election Observation Mission in Minsk”:http://www.osce.org/item/48242.html, the state-controlled media devoted approximately 90 percent of their election coverage to the president, with the remaining 10 percent being shared by his nine opponents.
The OSCE further has described the vote count process on Sunday as flawed, with nearly half of the OSCE’s international observers reporting that the count was largely non-transparent and conducted in silence. In addition, the OSCE has observed that sometimes “the figures recorded in the results of polling stations were different upon arrival at the Territorial Election Commissions (TEC).”
The fact remains, however, that Alexander Lukashenko is still the most popular politician in Belarus. Years of repression and of political failures have left the opposition weakened and divided, with its grassroots organizing machinery diminished. Even without the alleged falsifications, the opposition did not manage to present itself as a strong alternative to Lukashenko. Nevertheless, “a survey conducted two months ago by the Independent Institute of Socio-Economic and Political Studies”:http://www.iiseps.org/epress15.html indicated that Lukashenko’s approval rating was lower by over 13 percent on the eve of this election than on the eve of the previous presidential election in 2006.
Much is at stake for Belarus after Sunday’s presidential election. With its foreign debt mushrooming and its currency reserves dwindling, Belarus desperately needs foreign direct investment and economic reforms, and perceptions about the current regime’s legitimacy by potential investors matter. Despite Lukashenko’s truce with Russia and the suppression of protestors on Sunday night, all indicators suggest that Lukashenko likely will attempt to continue his strategy of maneuvering between the East and the West. Indeed, he likely will try to curry favor with European leaders again, albeit after a respite. Just yesterday, he referred to the election as “very progressive compared to the last election” and, dismissing the OSCE’s conclusions as mistaken, declared that Belarus is ready for partnership with the European Union.
The European Union and the United States have their own pragmatic reasons for reengaging with Belarus, notwithstanding their distaste for Lukashenko. This reality has caused fear amongst the opposition that Western actors might shift their support to the current Belarusian regime for pragmatic and strategic reasons, regardless of the regime’s failure to meet democratic standards, thereby causing a further retrenchment of the political status quo in Belarus. In the run-up to the election, Belarus’s democratic opposition grew particularly jittery about Lukashenko’s attempts at normalizing relations with the European Union, as well as the “diplomatic breakthrough”:http://minsk.usembassy.gov/usbel_statement_120110.html he achieved with the United States earlier this month after agreeing to relinguish his country’s stockpile of enriched uranium.
Much as Western governments would like to tie their reengagement with Belarus to political change in the country, past experience suggests that Lukashenko will not easily oblige. In light of this, the challenge for Western governments will be to find a way to induce the Belarusian government to move towards political pluralism and reforms that go beyond mere window dressing. So far, the White House has adopted a principled stance and issued a “statement”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2010/12/20/statement-press-secretary-belarusian-elections-and-political-violence/ not recognizing the election.
As for the future of the Belarusian opposition, the deficit of ideas about how to proceed is stark. If it is to succeed, the opposition, in addition to presenting a united front and consolidating its supporters, must find a way to reach the large segment of the population that neither supports Lukashenko nor sees a viable political alternative to him. At the moment, capturing these individuals’ support while simultaneously overcoming the institutional hurdles presented by the current regime may be an insurmountable challenge. But as economic conditions necessitate further economic and political changes in Belarus, these institutional constraints may begin to give way, thereby creating a climate more conducive to reform.