Nobody was surprised about the results of the presidential elections in Belarus. According to the Central Electoral Commission of Belarus the existing president, Alexandr Lukashenko got 82% of votes. The oppositional candidates got few votes (Alexandr Milinkevich – 6%, Sergey Haydukevich – 3,5%, Alexandr Kozulin – 2,3%). The voter participation capacity covered over 90%.
Of course the opposition doesn’t agree with the results. It is not difficult to imagine the future developments: it will be like that in Armenia only with some differences. The first common thing with us is that the oppositionists have their own approach: they don’t agree with the results and criticize. They also organize rallies. The rallies are very similar to one another: according to different sources the number of the rally participants in Minsk on March 19 covered 3-10.000. This number is not enough to solve a problem. If we take into account the fact that the population of Belarus is three times more than in Armenia we can assume that our oppositionists are more experienced. The next common thing with us is that during rallies people are surrounded and controlled by the police and there are cars with barbed wires and special police forces nearby.
As for the differences, the first difference is that Lukashenko is being elected for third time. But in the nearest future this problem will be solved too. The second difference is that in spite of all the criticisms Lukashenko is backed by most of the Belarusian people. Their opposition agrees with this. Particularly head of Milinkevich’s headquarter says that the results of their “exit polls” show that 47% have voted for Lukashenko, and 25% – for Milinkevich.
The biggest difference is that in spite of the fact that there were more violations in Armenia, the international community has a more aggressive approach to Lukashenko. The reason is not that Kocharyan is more democratic or has more prosperity for that, but there are other reasons. The main reason is probably the fact that Lukashenko doesn’t lead complimentary foreign politics and has a significant, positive approach to Russia. Of course the US doesn’t like this. Second, there is no territorial conflict in Belarus and Lukashenko has not promised anyone to do his best to solve the conflict in order to prolong his term.
This is the reason why the criticisms addressed to them is more, the Russian president Putin is also partly to blame for this. Before these elections a lot of politicians had predicted that the US would not be satisfied with the results of elections.
For example “The Wall Street Journal” writes an article titled “The last dictator of Europe”. The reporter, Metiy Kaminski writes, “Lukashenko is the biggest politician in the club of the enemies of democracy. He is a clever populist; he brings up the personalities that are rejected by the society and ignores the opposition and political mutual understanding in a traditional Bolshevistic way. This 51 year old person is famous with the description of Condoleezza Rice: the last dictator of Europe. It is also worth mentioning that Vladimir Putin and some other politicians can also be described this way”.
It is very interesting that the author doesn’t include Armenia in the list of these countries. “After the collapse of authoritarian regimes in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan could keep their positions on the basis of violated elections”, writes the report. What about our elections and referendum? Either the reporter thinks that Armenia is more democratic than the mentioned countries or they are not interested in Armenia at all. But maybe their press hasn’t got the permission to write this kind of approach about Armenia because the proposed 2006 year is not over yet. The people that think that their mass Media is really independent are mistaken.
The governments of Baltic countries and Poland have criticized the elections too. As for Russia, it reacted in a duly manner: Russia officially sent a note to Belarus recognizing the results of the presidential elections in Belarus.
Yesterday head of the Russia-Belarus union, Dmitri Borodin announced that if the Belarusian people didn’t like Lukashenko neither Russia nor anyone else could help them. “Lukashenko is not an angel, but the results of the elections really say a lot about the people’s voice and it is not difficult to agree with them”, said Borodin.
Russia’s approach to the elections is not a secret for anyone and no one is expecting a fair estimation from them. But in spite of this it will be wrong to say that people don’t like him. At least their economy is developing rapidly: the average wage covers 250 dollars and the average stipend – 120 dollars in Belarus.
As for western hysteria to Lukashenko, which will increase, we would agree with it if our referendum with 1,5 million voter participation would be reacted in a duly manner by the leading democratic states of the world.