An Interpretation of Events in Belarus.

Last night in Minsk on 19 December 2010 there were riots caused by the usual groups who contest election results in Belarus and the police acting brutally to disperse protesters after Lukashenko got just under 80% of the vote.

There are serious allegations of electoral fraud and the OSCE has regarded the election as flawed, even though the OSCE has had a history of partisan recognition with regards rigged elections ( such as with Saakashvili's in Georgia in January 2004 in which he got 96%).

The BBC carried a report that stated,

Security forces in Belarus have arrested hundreds of people who protested against the result of Sunday's presidential election.

At least seven presidential candidates were among those detained. Some of them were reportedly also beaten by police.

The OSCE called the poll "flawed" while the US and EU condemned the crackdown.

But President Alexander Lukashenko, who was re-elected for a fourth term with almost 80% of the vote, accused opposition supporters of "banditry".

"The vandals and hooligans lost their human face. They simply turned into beasts," he told a news conference in Minsk.

"You saw how our law-enforcers behaved. They stood firm and acted exclusively within the bounds of the law. They defended the country and people from barbarism and ruin."

"There will be no revolution or criminality in Belarus."

The Guardian reported, ( Alexander Lukashenko wins fourth term as Belarus president ),

The result was announced hours after riot police dispersed thousands of demonstrators protesting against alleged voting fraud.

The Belarus Central Election Commission said preliminary results showed Lukashenko had collected 79.67% of the vote in yesterday's election. The next-highest vote among the nine candidates was just 2.56%.

The announcement followed a violent night in which police dispersed demonstrators who massed outside the main government office to denounce alleged vote-rigging.

Protesters broke windows and smashed glass doors in the government building, which also houses the election commission, but were repelled by riot police waiting inside.

Hundreds more police and Interior Ministry troops then arrived in trucks, causing most of the demonstrators to flee. Some tried to hide in the courtyards of nearby apartment buildings, but many were bludgeoned by troops.

Several of the candidates who ran against Lukashenko were arrested and the top opposition leader, Vladimir Neklyaev, was forcibly taken from the hospital where he was being treated after he and two other candidates were beaten during clashes with government forces.

Neklyaev's aide said seven men in civilian clothing had wrapped him in a blanket on his hospital bed and carried him outside. His location is currently unknown.

Russia and the EU are closely monitoring the election, having offered major economic inducements to tilt Belarus in their direction.

In recent years, Lukashenko has quarrelled intensively with the Kremlin, his main sponsor, as Russia raised prices for the below-market gas and oil on which the Belarus economy depends.

His tone changed this month, however, after Russia agreed to drop tariffs for oil exported to Belarus – a concession worth an estimated $4bn (£2.5bn) a year.

Lukashenko has also been working to curry favour with the west, which has criticised his 16-year rule for human rights abuses and repressive politics.

Last week, he called for improved ties with the US, which he had cast as an enemy in previous years. However, the violent dispersal of opposition protests makes a rapprochement with the west unlikely.

Whatever irregularities there are can be challenged but that there is a strategy by Western NGOs to replace Lukashenko with a pro-US and Atlanticist group of politicians paid for and answerable to foreign powers is hardly news.

The fact is that Lukashenko does command the majority of votes in Belarus even without the stuffing of ballot boxes.

Unfortunately in recent years the proliferation of instant global news has led to designer democracy groups funded by those like George Soros to get societies more open to money power and oligarchies that support Western geopolitical strategies over creating truly accountable democracies beyond the rich and well connected.

Andrej Dynko has written an article for The Guardian today that attempts objectivity under the headline Belarus election: The last dictator in Europe.

Dynko's Nasha Niva is supported by groups like the Prague Society for International Cooperation which is sponsored by think tanks such as the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society which supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and for "Democratic Geopolitics".

A full list of "Partners and Friends" includes the Prague Marriott Hotel and Radio Free Europe. That does not mean Dynko is not credible but increasingly it has become difficult to distinguish between those wanting truth and those who advocate a propaganda line.

Dynko writes,

.......never have there been so many candidates. But the number of candidates is no guarantee of any substantial political change.

The country itself has changed a lot in 15 years, despite the dictatorship of Alexander Lukashenko. Its economy has grown at twice the rate of neighbouring Ukraine's. This is a Chinese, or rather a Singaporean model – and Lukashenko is convinced it is the one best suited to the Belarusian mentality and geopolitical situation.

Not everyone agrees with him, however. A parallel society has grown up: rock music, samizdat and discussion clubs are all flourishing. In order to catch this wave Lukashenko is ready to commandeer what used to be the opposition's seditious slogan, "For Freedom".

Belarus has avoided the period of neoliberal shock therapy that devastated and indebted the Baltic Republics which is why Lukashenko has pointed to the freedom from unemployment and consumer pleasures.

That is no reason to downgrade the repression in Belarus but that if the only choice is between Lukashenko and neoliberal "reforms" then many Belarussians will continue to stay with Lukashenko through despairing on an alternative.

Freedom is freedom. Yet those seeing Charter97 as a successor to Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia ( many of whose supporters did not want US style capitalism, though that's in the Orwellian memory hole now ) have failed to see why the opposition is not so popular as it could be.

Lukashenko is following the Singaporean or Chinese model as he is authoritarian and the attractions of the economic model in neighbouring countries offered not much to those who would be thrown on the scrapheap by asset stripping, the rule of consultants and the "Marriott men".

Charter97 claims it opposes "dictatorial privatisation" But the privatisations after 1990 were hardly 'democratic' with using former activists their connections to act as consultants, sell off plant and destroy whole swathes of manufacturing to create a "correct" investment climate.

Few in Poland realised in 1990 that by 2004 unemployment rates would still be so high nor how draconian the neoliberal Balcerowicz Plan was going to be. Balcerowicz knew that which is why he cynically called for "extraordinary politics" to ram through his reforms by exploiting the euphoria of liberation.

In Belarus, Lukashenko's rise to be "Bat'ka" depended after 1995 in his ability to crack down on the corruption and chaos witnessed under Yeltsin in Russia in the 1990s and the fear that US involvement in its economy would replicate that in Poland, a nation with a stronger economy and sense of national identity.

Reform that would benefit Belarus and the rest of Europe can happen but only if "Democracy Promotion" is no longer tied cynically to privatising the economy into the hands of investors interested only in short term profits and plundering a "liberated" economy.

Even so, that democratic reform is necessary is obvious, despite all the propaganda about Lukashenko's "social market economy", combining economic advances with a "Chinese" style state in Eastern Europe.

The harassment of journalists, police brutality and threats to close down Nasha Niva are bad and need to be condemned. A government that operates on principles of violence to its citizens to coerce conformity is fundamentally wrong.

But the question has moved since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and the USSR in 1991 from freedom from one party states to one of "freedom for what ?". As if its chaos on offer, more people will be prepared to surrender their freedom to authoritarian regimes.

There is no reason why being sceptical of the tactics and objectives of oppositionists in Belarus means necessary support for Lukashenko. If democracy has not prevailed in most parts of the post-Soviet bloc the reasons go beyond simplistic notions of Lukashenko being a New Hitler.

For as important as repression has been in propping up the regime, it is not the only explanation as to why he has retained power in Minsk despite all the attempts of oppositionists to undermine his authority.