BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

27/02/2006

Belarus: No Surprises On Election Day

Summary

Belarus will hold presidential elections March 19, and thanks to an October 2004 referendum, President Aleksandr Lukashenko will be participating. Even with the opposition united behind a challenger who is also backed by the international community, Lukashenko is expected to win another term by a wide margin. Minsk thus will not see a new "color revolution," and as long as Russia (and Gazprom) has a strong interest in Belarus and the West's attention is elsewhere, little will change in the former Soviet republic.

Analysis

Belarus will not hold presidential elections until March 19. Even so, the winner is all but a forgone conclusion: incumbent President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

Lukashenko eliminated term limits that would have barred him from seeking re-election in an October 2004 referendum. Since then, he has continued consolidating control over Belarus' 10 million citizens. Although the opposition has united behind a candidate, who is also backed by the international community, Lukashenko is expected to win another term by a wide margin.

First elected in 1994, Lukashenko has imposed his will throughout the government, enacting laws strengthening the executive and making the parliament a house of yes-men. Lukashenko is genuinely popular with a significant segment of the population: those with business interests supported by the government, pensioners (who, surprisingly for the former Soviet world, are actually paid on time), and even many young people. Those who came of age after Lukashenko's rise perceive him as a stabilizer and a strong ruler. And most Belarusians are simply happy that there is no war and prefer sticking with the known quantity of Lukashenko's regime

When Belarusians compare themselves to other former Soviet citizens, they feel fortunate. In contrast to the ethnic tensions or economic collapse common elsewhere in the old Soviet Union, Belarus has remained fairly stable since independence. To a great degree, Russia subsidizes Belarus (mostly by buying Belarusian exports, such as tractors, and by supplying Minsk with cut-rate energy), enabling Lukashenko to continue to avoid cooperating with international economic and political structures. The sale to Gazprom of Belarus' pipeline infrastructure has guaranteed Russian natural gas transit to Europe, and low energy prices for Belarus. Perhaps because the economy continues to grow and the people remain quiescent, Lukashenko sees no reason to change his policies.

His main opponent is Aleksandr Milinkevich, the candidate of the united opposition. A physicist by training, he is popular in Europe, where Lukashenko is not. While leading the Belarusian opposition is an impressive task in itself, Milinkevich still cannot compete with the media saturation of the all-pervasive Lukashenko campaign. Although the president does not use up his allotted television and radio time, his name and image are ubiquitous.

The real question is what will happen to the opposition coalition after the elections. Postelection violence is unlikely, since Lukashenko will use the state security forces to disperse any gatherings quickly and quietly, as he has before. Whether the opposition will remain united is also uncertain. In Azerbaijan, opposition parties were not able to remain united after a crushing defeat by the sitting president, while in Ukraine, a defeated opposition coalesced to stage the Orange Revolution. Belarus will not follow the Ukrainian trajectory (at least not this time). Whether the opposition will remain coherent at all will depend on perceptions of how it did on election day. And while neither the opposition nor the West will trust the official results, exit polls will shape these perceptions by pointing toward Milinkevich's actual support.

Ukraine is also holding elections, though unlike the already pro-Moscow Belarus, it is on the verge of falling more squarely under Russia's influence. Moscow will continue to protect its interests on this western flank, tolerating Lukashenko to maintain its remaining buffer with the West. And Lukashenko will remain in power as long as Western attention is diverted elsewhere while Russian attention stays put.

Source:

http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=262798