MINSK, Belarus (AP) – The fragmented political opposition in the former Soviet nation united Oct. 2 to field a single candidate to challenge Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in next year’s presidential election.
Inspired by the recent ouster of unpopular governments in several other ex-Soviet lands, Belarus’ pro-reform forces hoped to put an end the more than decade-long rule of Lukashenko, dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” for his crackdown on dissent and free media.
About 800 representatives of Belarus’ opposition parties and movements gathered in the capital, Minsk, and named Alexander Milinkevich as their candidate.
“Belarus will win freedom forever in 2006,” said Milinkevich, who holds an advanced degree in physics and briefly served in a local administration in his native western city of Grodno near the border with Poland in the early 1990s.
Milinkevich, 58, studied at the University of California and also attended the German-U.S. George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany.
The short list of potential presidential candidates at the opposition congress also included Belarus’ first post-Soviet leader, Stanislav Shushkevich; United Civil Party leader Anatoly Lebedko, and Communist Party chief Sergei Kalyakin. All have tried to challenge Lukashenko in past elections.
Milinkevich, who narrowly defeated Lebedko by a 399-391 second-round vote at the congress, pledged to name his three rivals to key positions in his campaign headquarters.
Shushkevich said authorities had tried to hamper the congress by harassing its delegates. The government also barred Poland’s Law and Justice party, the leader in Poland’s parliamentary elections last month, from attending the congress.
Belarus opposition activists have taken inspiration from Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in which mass protests against election fraud led to victory for pro-Western presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. Similar public protests also have swept away unpopular rulers in the ex-Soviet nations Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.
“We believe that Belarus will be next after Georgia and Ukraine,” Milinkevich told The Associated Press.
Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 10 million people since 1994, extending his rule through a series of elections and referenda that Western observers called fraudulent. The latest referendum last November allowed Lukashenko to run for president an indefinite number of times.
Belarus’ opposition activists last tried to field a single candidate in 2001.
Lukashenko has reintroduced Soviet symbols, disbanded parliament, closed independent media and maintained rigid Soviet-style state controls over the economy. Many opposition leaders have been either jailed or have disappeared.
Milinkevich urged foreign nations to “break an information blockade” imposed on the opposition by state-controlled media.
Speaking to the congress Sunday, Lebedko said he would offer Lukashenko security guarantees. Milinkevich refused to offer any.
Lukashenko’s strongman ways have made him a pariah in the West, but he has signed a union agreement with Russia envisaging close political, economic and military ties. Russia provides Belarus with long-term loans and supplies oil and gas at low prices, and the Kremlin has strengthened support for the Belarusian leader following the regime change in Ukraine.
Belarus’ united opposition has chosen a red tree on a white field as its emblem – the symbol of life and victory over fear imposed on the colors of the nation’s post-Soviet flag, which Lukashenko replaced with an old Soviet one after his first election.
“Belarusians are tired of fear,” said Yanina Galkovich, a 46-year-old teacher from the western city of Pinsk who attended the opposition congress. “I’m here to defend the European future of my country.”
