Kazulin Employs Lukashenka's Stylistics, Milinkevich Counts on Contrast

2006-03-02

By Pavel Kirylaw

First of all, they decided to take it to give at least a small touch of democracy to the heavily criticized election campaign. Secondly, the addresses were not broadcast in the prime time but at a time when most people were on their way from work home. Thus, the actual audience was rather small. Thirdly, to have a person speak for half an hour in front of the camera without any other action - "talking head" - is usually quite dull and has little publicity effect.

It looks like the authorities are sure that television statements by presidential candidates can hardly have any substantial impact on the election, especially if they already know its outcome.

But the opposition candidates did whatever they could to make viewers remember their speeches. This is particularly relevant for the leader of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party Alyaksandr Kazulin. His speech was loud and populist, in the style of Russia's Vladimir Zhirinovsky or Lukashenka in the 1990s. It looked like Kazulin decided to use against Lukashenka his own weapon.

He treated the head of state with excessive familiarity and tore up his administration's newspaper, Sovetskaya Byelorussiya. Kazulin played the buffoon with the use of smirks and intonations.

At the same time, he gave a lot of promises and expressed bitter criticism about the situation in the country and its leader. He was speaking on the verge of decency, particularly, alleging that the officially married Lukashenka is in a civil union with another woman and has a son from her.

In general, Kazulin's speech is certainly something to remember. But whether his style can be liked by Belarusian voters is quite another matter. Perhaps the authorities expect that people would not accept it, which is why they did not censor his broadcast.

Another possibility is that Kazulin's remarks can be interpreted as slander against the president. His registration can be annulled and even criminal proceedings can be started.

As a matter of fact, both Kazulin and Milinkevich criticized the government for the same things, although in different ways. Both described stability in Belarus as stagnation, raised the issue of election fraud and promised to abolish labor contracts.

The leader of the united pro-democracy opposition made his speech sound calm and intelligent, by contrast to the emotional Lukashenka. And also to the emotional Kazulin. To make his speech more convincing, Milinkevich structured it as a question and answer session, reading out questions he received while touring Belarus and giving his answers.

In short, the opposition candidates have chosen different ways of fighting for votes. It is difficult to say which approach would work better. But both Kazulin and Milinkevich have tried to change the public opinion about the opposition in general, which can bring short- and long-term benefits. The former makes the opposition's image brighter and more understandable by his colorful remarks and buffoonish jokes, while the latter makes it more positive.

In particular, Milinkevich said, "When we are asked about what is going to happen to civil servants in a new Belarus, I give a frank answer: those who violated the law will have to answer for it; if a person is clean, he or she will continue to work. We will even ask these people to stay in their workplaces. No one is going to replace absolutely all civil servants."

Or on a different topic, "We will build relations with Russia even better than today, because many economic agreements do not work now since there is much more political blubber in our relations than real economy. We should make our bilateral agreements mutually beneficial, long-term and transparent, which is very important. And our policy toward Russia is going to be predictable. Moreover, Russia has been and will remain a strategic partner for Belarus."

Those parts are certainly intended for those who are afraid that a new leader would make drastic changes in the government.

Interestingly enough, Kazulin criticizes both the government and the opposition: "The old opposition is even farther from the people. It failed to achieve anything but defeats in the past 15 years. It goes from defeat to defeat." The social democratic leader is trying to present himself as a new political force free from a burden of defeats. But official propaganda can hardly allow him to promote such a perception among the general public.

One more presidential candidate, Syarhey Haydukevich, who is often described as Lukashenka's sparring partner, also spoke a lot about the opposition. "There are political forces in Belarus who are literally nurtured by the West. They are trying to get power to fulfill the single goal of their sponsors: destroy the Belarusian-Russian union," he said in his speech. "They already made clear in their statements that they would be ready for radical actions for the sake of someone else's interests."

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has turned down his right of making a special television appearance. Indeed, he does not need these two 30-minute speeches on television and radio, because he appears on TV almost every hour every day. The coverage of the upcoming Belarusian People's Assembly would be enough to compensate for any single television appearance allowed for presidential candidates.

In addition, his decision not to use his right of making candidate speeches is also intended to show that he is a front-runner and he is confident in his victory. Nevertheless, Lukashenka's team is unfolding his campaign on a large scale, even despite 75 percent popular support as reported by government pollsters.