Physicist will try to unseat dictator Lukashenko
Opposition parties in Belarus on Oct. 2chose a physics professor and civil society activist to run against the country’s hard-line president next year.
The candidate, Alexander Milinkevich, said only a united opposition could challenge what he called the last dictator in Europe, Alexander Lukashenko.
Western leaders, including U.S. President George W. Bush, have long criticized Lukashenko, who was elected Belarusian president in 1994. He disbanded parliament in late 1996, when he began closing independent media, suppressing opposition parties and jailing critics.
The Belarusian economy is state-controlled. The nation’s food is grown on collective farms; its media and educational institutions are closely monitored. Lukashenko has used violence and harassment to eliminate serious opposition, and propaganda to convince his people that they are surrounded by spies, subversives and external enemies. Lukashenko has twice extended his term in office by decree.
Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in May 2006.
Milinkevich, 58, a former science professor, told the Post on Oct. 4 that he cannot promise victory.
But, he said, “we won’t give up until we get the job done.”
The opposition ran a joint candidate, Belarusian trade union leader Vladimir Goncharik, in the last presidential elections in 2001. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) refused to recognize the poll results as legitimate.
Lukashenko, who is supported by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has ruled out the possibility of a popular revolt in Belarus, saying he will preserve stability at all costs.
As next year’s poll approaches, attacks on civil rights activists and independent media have intensified. Miklos Haraszti, the media representative for the OSCE, on Oct. 3 accused Lukashenko’s government of closing Narodnaya Volya, forcing two state distributors and a publishing house to cancel their opposition tabloid.
Haraszti said the paper’s closure “would be a major setback in the development of the free press in Belarus and a great loss for Belarusian society.” Volya was considered the most important voice of the opposition in Belarus, printing approximately 150,000 copies a week.
The Belarusian Association of Independent Journalists branded the action as “lawless,” saying the move was intended to silence the country’s last remaining independent voice.
Lukashenko, meanwhile, has accused Western governments, including the United States, Poland, Lithuania, and European Union member states, of helping to devise plans to oust him.
Although many opposition leaders say Lukashenko is less popular now, they believe that next ballot will be rigged and that victory can only be won if ordinary citizens turn out at protest rallies, as happened during Ukraine’s so-called Orange Revolution in Kyiv last year.
President Viktor Yushchenko, who rarely mentions Belarus publicly, last month communicated directly with Lukashenko during a meeting with leaders of former Soviet republics in Kazan, Russia on Aug. 26. Details of the meeting, which took place days after the arrest of Ukrainian pro-democracy demonstrators in Minsk, were not released.
World leaders, including billionaire open society advocate George Soros, former German President Richard von Weizsaeker, former President of Ireland Mary Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, among others, harshly condemned Lukashenko last month in an open letter, holding him responsible for abusing basic human and citizens’ rights in the republic “on a daily basis.”
“We are…convinced that it is necessary to make use of every opportunity … to take a stand against this post-Soviet autocrat and his efforts to totally suppress the remains of independent initiatives in Belarus,” said the statement released on Aug. 18 by the group, led by former Czech President Vaclav Havel and the Dalai Lama.
