Simon Tisdall writing in The Guardian of the protests against Lukashenko following his election amidst claims of fraud,Alexander Lukashenko and his black-shirted riot police reverted to type at the weekend, cracking heads and arresting opponents while fabricating a landslide election victory. This violent regression victimised the people of Belarus.
The EU blew its chance to bring Belarus in from the cold ( Monday 20 December 2010 )
Many Belarussians continue to vote Lukashenko and distrust the oppositionists. One important reason may be that they never spell out what their economic agenda actually is should Lukashenko be removed.
The financial backing of the US for the 'Denim Revolution' of 2006 and supposed "NGOs" hardly helps as all opposition per se can be smeared as "in the pay of the enemy".
As Andrew Wilson of the European Council on Foreign Relations has noted, Lukashenko depends on "a social contract with most ordinary Belarusians – relative prosperity in return for a relative lack of political freedom". His ability to maintain stability, order, and jobs (up to a point) was his main and possibly his only plus with voters. So when he fell out with his Russian patrons, Lukashenko sought new friends such as China, Venezuela – and the EU.
If "the West" has been to blame, then was a result of promoting neoliberal shock therapy style "reforms" instead of working towards an agreement with Belarus that did not mean it has to follow other nations the former Eastern bloc in being subjected to asset stripping, the rule of consultants and mass unemployment.
Michael Binyon, a former Moscow correspondent for The Times, has argued that Lukashenko still had support, despite the protests.
"Among many ordinary people I wouldn't say there is widespread support [for the opposition], they're pretty resigned to seeing Lukashenko continue in office..Lukashenko has been able since he came to power in 1994 of drawing attention to the way Belarus has been 'protected' from these negative consequences as well as the failures seldom ever mentioned in the mainstream media in Western nations with regards Poland and "katastrioka" in Russia.
...And he's not completely unpopular because Belarus has enjoyed a stable standard of living - it's not a high standard of living at all, but they've avoided some of the confrontations and disruptions that they've seen in other parts of the former Soviet Union. Pensioners for example still get a reasonable pension."
What Lukashenko has realised is that China became the power to be reckoned with that it is because it rejected the Western model that Russia embraced after 1991 that was proposed as "the only option" by international financial institutions such as the IMF.
But Tisdall argues that Belarus is some sort of economic basket case and insinuates that Belarussians also partly have themselves to blame for voting incorrectly for Lukashenko without understanding the reasons why Lukashenko has been popular has lain in his curtailing of the the corruption and chaos of the 1990s.
Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, reassuringly described the post-election brutality as solely an internal matter. And Putin praised Lukashenko last week for taking "a clear course towards integration with Russia".
Whether Russia will deliver is the next big question. Having played the two sides off against each other to personally beneficial effect, Lukashenko now faces a bigger worry: an external debt of 52% of GDP, a $7bn trade gap, an unmodernised, largely state-owned economy, and rising expectations among 9.5 million Belarusians who have swapped political liberty for jam tomorrow.
The contention that Belarussians have sacrificed freedom for the illusion of security could be made about made increasingly about states even in the West. Only that Belarus is a repressive state in which elections are tampered with and opponents have gone missing.
A dangerous new development has been the increasing connection between capitalism with authoritarian state power has been to stimulate a degree of consent through consumerism and control a docile population whilst liberties pall.
Yet the direct comparisons in economic terms have to be with the neighbouring Baltic Republics. As Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers argued with regards the "Latvian Model" in The Guardian just today, (Latvia provides no magic solution for indebted economies )
Given a 25% fall in GDP during the crisis, such a growth rate would take a decade to just restore the size of Latvia's 2007 economy. Is this "dead cat" bounce sufficiently compelling for other EU states to follow it over the fiscal cliff?
The method by which the EU's creditor nations and banks would like to resolve this crisis is "internal devaluation": lower wages, public spending and living standards to make the debtors pay. This is the old IMF austerity doctrine that failed in the developing world. It looks like it is about to be reprised.
The EU policy seems to be for wage earners and pension savers to bail out banks for their legacy of bad mortgages and other loans that cannot be paid – except by going into poverty.
The fear of the practical impact of neoliberal policies clearly is not something that Euro-Atlanticists such as Tisdall want to put up for critical discussion. Moreover, the evidence has been that businesses have been attracted to investing in Belarus in recent years.
Far from it being opposed to 'the Chinese model', there seems to be increasingly a greater convergence between authoritarianism, corporate capitalism and globalisation that Western powers have colluded in where it has suited their interests and the monied elites.
Who and what, exactly, are the Belarusian opposition? We know what they are against. But what, exactly, are they for? We have made the mistake of not asking that one on an awful lot of occasions, and are continuing to do so on several more.
ReplyDeleteNow, I am not saying that Belarus is perfect. But when Saakashvili receives 97 cent of the vote, then that's fine. Yet when Lukashenko manages just under 80 per cent, then that proves that the polls were rigged, that Belarus is a Brezhnevian theme park (the government there does have an unfortunate taste in kitsch from that era), that Lukashenko is "Europe's last dictator", and so forth.
Lukashenko, you see, has no desire for the neoliberal economics without which Belarus, balancing IMF and Russian loans, has weathered the global economic crisis far better than have the Friedman-worshipping Baltic States. Nor does he wish to join either NATO or the EU. Nor will he be doing as Georgia does and spending 70 per cent of his country's budget on American and Israeli weapons. But he does maintain cordial relations with the equally independent and distinctive countries on the neocon hate list. Independence and distinctiveness? We can't be having any of that. Where would it all end?
If you really wanted to take out the main centre of dodgy arms-dealing, then you'd invade Britain. Any action against "national minorities" in Belarus is only a reaction to Polish attempts to stir up trouble among nationalists within the Belarusian Polish community.
The CIA is giving youths computers so that they can go online and pass themselves off as a mass, grassroots opposition when in reality they are merely bored with the way that their country is, as people that age are wont to be. March 2006 saw the hilarious "Denim Revolution" of a few spotty adolescents holding up pictures of George Bush. Where are they now? Not dead or banged up, if that is what you are thinking.
Saakashvili got 96% ( I've got it wrong a couple of times too ) but clearly it could just have well have been 100% and the OSCE observers would have not decided it was not free and fair. Just "uncontested".
ReplyDeleteAs for the opposition in Belarus there is Charter97 which regularly reports on beatings by the KGB. These reports are not verified by sources from outside and its difficult to get the exact truth.
It's quite consistent to point out that Lukashenko does act brutally with his KGB and that most Belarusians do support a regime that protects them from the ravages of market fundamentalism.
And that this is due to fear not of "freedom" as such but fear of freedom from employment and a stable income, as well as the opposition offering nothing other than 'we hate Lukashenko'.
All these discussions are great but one very important aspect is missing. And this aspect is Belarusian culture, Belarusian language, Belarusian symbols. I know it would seem very irrelevant for the current global world. What is Belarusian culture, the culture of only 9 million people, for 6 billion people? Probably not a lot.
ReplyDeleteWhat is Belarusian culture for you, several British bloggers? Probably nothing. Why would you care when we talk empires here. And empires are important. Especially when one of those pretend-to-be empires may graciously financially support these discussions.It seems you know better then me how it works (iPads, laptops, etc. - but it probably won't be enough for the British citizen).
And the methods of the polemics are bringing up the same thoughts. I thought I could read such style only in Russian, but I was wrong. Why do we bring up Georgian results in the conversation about Belarus? How the results of Georgian elections would impact Belarus? Is there any difference if Lukashenko said 97% instead of 80%? I know that it would be difference between democratic elections and fair vote count on one side and falsified results of elections on the other (with either 80% or 97% you can pick whichever you feel like as Lukashenka did).
I know one thing. I saw my nation together for the first time in my life. I saw the civil society in Belarus. I know we'll be able to build our own nation. Zhyvie Belarus!!!