Lukashenka and Moscow vs. Milinkevich and the West

2006-02-22

By Andrey Fyodaraw

Opportunities of each of the four presidential candidates are not comparable, of course. Syarhey Haydukevich could be in the worst situation in terms of foreign support. No international organization or prominent foreign political figure has shown a positive attitude toward him, and it is very unlike that this can happen in the future. There is nothing surprising about such a situation, because Haydukevich is too ambiguous and vague politically.

Alyaksandr Kazulin has not received much more. The only thing that comes to mind is compliments addressed to him from Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas, who is social democrat like Kazulin. However, Brazauskas was strongly criticized at home for that.

Similarly, it is not likely that serious improvements in terms of international support for Kazulin can be expected. Social democrats in other European capitals must remember the role he played in a not really decent situation that split Mikalay Statkevich's Belarusian Social Democratic Party "Narodnaya Hramada."

Political support from the West for the candidate of the united pro-democracy force Alyaksandr Milinkevich looks particularly impressive against that background. His meetings with EU leaders set a high level of international solidarity with the Belarusian opposition.

Meanwhile, the incumbent has most of his external support in the east. The level where the Belarusian leader and his system are receiving praise from is also rather high but still not comparable with the level of meetings held by the main opposition candidate.

In particular, former speaker of the Russian State Duma Gennady Seleznyov visited Minsk recently and communicated the following message: "The main political forces in Russia are interested in Alyaksandr Lukashenka's reelection." Moreover, other Duma members intend to come to Belarus in the run-up to the election "to make speeches in front of labor collectives in support of Lukashenka," according to the chairman of the Belarusian House of Representatives Uladzimir Kanaplyow.

The prominent Russian spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky, notorious for his role in the headquarters of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine's presidential election, also visited Minsk recently and reportedly said that it would impossible to help alternative candidate even for him. His remark was rather funny, because many still remember his obvious failures in Ukraine.

The state media in Belarus are trying to pick up and circulate any comments from Russian figures in support of the Belarusian authorities. In particular, many newspapers have echoed each other while quoting Nikolay Bordyuzha, secretary general of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, who said that there were not preconditions for any revolution in Belarus. Similarly, Belarusian voters have been repeatedly informed about Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov's remarks at an international security conference in Munich. He called Lukashenka the most popular politician in Belarus and expressed certainty that he would win the election. Propaganda workers were not the least confused by his remark that "we would not allow any disorder in Belarus." It sounds very much like interfering in other country's affairs. But when voices of support for Lukashenka come only from Moscow, the situation may look somewhat one-sided.

To make it more balanced, the Belarusian television has launched a new series of documentaries, Belarus: A Look from Outside, to give the floor to unrenowed figures from the West who praise Lukashenka's achievements and criticizes "the enemies of the Belarusian people." Their interviews look poor and unconvincing but such propaganda has certain effects in the condition of informational vacuum.

Since the general public knows very little about Milinkevich's European triumph, some sort of inversion occurs: most people get a distorted impression about actual external support for the presidential candidates. This again proves the importance of breaking the information blockade as soon as possible to enhance chance of pro-democracy forces.