Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has a reputation as a master tactician, which he deserves: since 1994, he has balanced the former Soviet state’s relations with the West and Russia, while shedding presidential term limits and staging major victories. . in each and every presidential election.
Lukashenko declared himself president with 76% of the vote in 2001, 83% in 2006, 80% in 2010 and 83% in 2015.
Now, his fate may be changing, but Belarus’s nine-August presidential election, which is expected to give Lukashenko a sixth consecutive term, has led to an unprecedented political crisis, which claimed to have won 80% of the vote.But this temporarily encountered widespread opposition. On 16 August, it is estimated that more than 200,000 people demonstrated across the country calling for the resignation of Lukashenko, the largest demonstration in Belarusian history.
As a researcher on Eastern Europe born and raised in Belarus, I have followed very closely the president’s handling of this crisis and I believe that he has made two main mistakes since the disputed vote on 9 August, mistakes that would possibly help the fall of dictators.
Celebrating the effects of elections is a component of the fashion autocrat’s playbook. Venezuela’s unpopular and authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, has won 68% of the 2018 presidential vote, an outcome that foreign observers noticed as fraudulent.That same year, Russia re-elected Vladimir Putin with 77% of the vote and no genuine opposition.
Lukashenko has long escaped with maximum unlikely electoral margins, this time due to popular activism that took a position before the presidential election.
In the weeks leading up to the elections in Belarus, a series of self-organized street protests against the mismanagement of Lukashenko’s economy and the general denial of COVID-19, known as the Shoe Revolution, spread from Minsk, the capital of Belarus, to at least 35 peoples.
Lukashenko had eliminated his main rivals by imprisoning banker Viktar Babaryka and blogger Siarhei Tsikhanouski, who may have just reached a wide audience, and forcing former diplomat Valery Tsepkala into exile.Instead of leaving the election, the opposition amassed around the likely candidacy of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a housewife with no political experience.
In July, Tsikhanouskaya attracted giant crowds to electoral rallies as a symbol of change, adding one that attracted at least 63,000 supporters to Minsk, a city of 2 million people.However, Lukashenko ignored the symptoms of popular discontent and underestimated the strength of activism opposed to him.
When the election effects showed an 80% victory for Lukashenko, Belarusians took to the streets to protest what they described as fraud.Tsikhanouskaya, who fled the country worried about her life, called for new elections.
Lukashenko didn’t grant anything. Instead, he called the police.
Belarus has already experienced post-election repressions in 2006 and 2010, but this time, police repression is much more violent.
Belarusian security forces used flash grenades, water cannons and tear fuel to suppress protesters, injuring passers-by during the process.More than 7,000 people have been arrested since 9 August, many of whom have been brutally beaten and mistreated in custody.At least two other people died: the first time post-election unrest in Belarus was fatal.
Police violence has triggered much greater protests. Since then, strikes and demonstrations by workers calling for free elections have taken over dozens of public and personal corporations in Belarus, adding Belaruskali, a foreign fertilizer producer, and the Minsk car plant, one of the largest in Eastern Europe.car manufacturers.
Women in white holding flowers and balloons began marching daily, challenging the police with their nonviolent tactics and not easy a new vote.
Even the most capable authoritarian leaders are fallible.
Daniel Treisman, a polytologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, analyzed 218 episodes in which autocracy replaced through a more democratic formula between 1800 and 2015 and found that in three-quarters of cases, the road to democratization had to do with one or more mistakes.The usual maximum errors are discovered in erroneous data and in an error calculating the final results of a problematic situation.
Despite his strategic mistakes, Lukashenko does not appear to be in a position to renounce Belarus.He calls his war parties “fascists” and “murderers,” blames protests on foreign spies and demonstrates strength by holding rallies with their supporters.fire the strikers.
Faced with the worst crisis of his 26 years in power, Lukashenko asked his tough neighbor, Russia, for help.Putin has been a best friend and enemy of Belarus over the years, according to his political calculations.But Putin is unlikely to help Lukashenko, who opposes the protesters, and warned foreign powers not to interfere in Belarusian affairs.
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If Russia and other countries remain on the sidelines, what happens next in Belarus will have the ability of the protesters to put pressure on Lukashenko.
Social movements sometimes go through 4 levels of development: emergence, coalescence, bureaucracy and decline.The Belarusian opposition has reached the level of coalescence, meaning that Americans engaged in mass behavior are aware of each other.
Lukashenko’s opposition begins to “bureaucratize.” On 18 August, the opposition established an entity called the BelarusIan Coordination Council to coordinate a nonviolent power movement, Lukashenko said it was an attempt to sees power.
Bureaucracy is boring. But you can if Lukashenko stays or falls.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit news story committed to sharing concepts from education experts.
Read more:
Elections in Belarus: Controversial outcome causes unrest as Europe’s ‘last dictator’ claims victory
Elections in Belarus: why strong man Alexander Lukashenko faces resistance
Tatsiana Kulakevich paints, consults, holds shares or obtains investments from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed any applicable association beyond her university appointment.