ELECTION RESULTS

ELECTION RESULTS

The presidential election in Belarus is practically over. The central election commission (CEC) promises to publicize the final official results tomorrow. Vladimir Goncharik, the candidate of the opposition coalition, has filed a complaint with the CEC, demanding that the results be annulled because of numerous violations. But hardly anybody doubts that the CEC will repeat with minor changes its figures of more than 75 percent of the votes supposedly cast for the incumbent Aleksandr Lukashenko.

The election has demonstrated two things - the cynicism of the authorities and the weakness of the opposition. It is obvious that the results of the vote were falsified - the question is to what extent. The domestic observers who tried to conduct parallel vote tabulation (PVT) keep silent because they have no answer. First, the PVT network was damaged by the authorities, who stripped a large number of the observers of registration at the last moment. But more importantly, the network received figures from the voting records that had already accumulated most of the fraud. Private opinion polls on the eve of the elections showed that Lukashenko had a good chance of winning in the first round (i.e. of taking more than 50 percent of the cast votes) with minimal irregularities on the voting day. Instead, the authorities employed bulldozer tactics even at the last stage of the election, without bothering about laws and possible non-recognition of the results by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Such a victory will lead to Lukashenko's additional dependence on Russia, because he will have to pay for the silent support during the elections and for the recognition of its results. But the impressive figures supposedly obtained by the winner will be a good base for the propaganda in the state media and will support Lukashenko's positions inside the country. This result outweighs all disadvantages for Lukashenko. That is why I can not agree with the statement by Vintsuk Viachorka, chairman of the opposition Belarusian Popular Front, who said that "Lukashenko's regime lost the elections because the civilized world has not recognized them as democratic." There can be no talk of the regime's defeat until the majority of Belarusians know about the falsifications and believe that Lukashenko actually has not won. To achieve this, the opposition will have to work long and hard.

Another Viachorka's conclusion seems more grounded: "Finally the end has come to the illusions of some our politicians that Russia will help the Belarusians to remove the dictatorship". One can add that hopes for the Belarusian nomenklatura were also futile. But the very procedure of nominating the single candidate of the opposition just a month before the elections made his victory impossible without support from the nomenklatura and without access to Russian television channels.

So far we can speak about the opposition's defeat. The opposition needs smarts to preserve unity and to act in the new conditions. It was also a defeat for the Belarusian society as a whole - no matter how one evaluates Lukashenko's policies. The elections are likely to confirm the popular opinion that nothing depends on an ordinary voter in Belarus so there is no sense in any civic activities. It is important that this opinion does not tempt those who were awaken from usual apathy by the election campaign.


Alex ZNATKEVICH, site editor

September 13