The photographs on social media were ruthless: the look of utter false impression that flared across Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s face when staff at a public factory, a central constituency in its decades of authoritarian rule, mocked and mocked him. he interrupted.
“Ukhodi!” Vehicle factory workers on the outskirts of the capital, Minsk, shouted on Monday after the besathed 65-year-old leader blew up a small helicopter to manipulate them, supposedly waiting for the same old heart demonstration.
Lukashenko’s security decided that the MZKT factory’s top unwavering staff would pay attention to Lukashenko.It didn’t help.” Get out of here!” – Singing the staff!LukashenkoGoAway – Belarus pic.twitter.com/IlXdjgPIVc
– NEXTA (@nexta_tv) August 17, 2020
As movements in state-owned enterprises increase and many employees leave their teams to join the popular protests that spread through Belarus, Lukashenko’s obvious loss through those in the heavy industries of the former Soviet republic is possibly a turning point in the week-long uprising, analysts say.
Lukashenko’s impressive spectacle, repudiated or even ridiculed through industry staff, whose livelihoods are historically connected to unconditional loyalty to the state, recalled scenes from decades ago in countries such as Poland and Romania, which until the last 1980s were part of the post-war period.Soviet bloc.
“There was some kind of social contract, with staff in particular, and it broke down,” said Andrew Wilson, principal investigator at the European Council on Foreign Affairs, who and others cited factors that, in addition to economic difficulties, affected the country, namely its dying state-owned enterprises, as Russian subsidies ran out.
According to press reports, Lukashenko ordered staff to remain at work.reported from Minsk.
The riots in Belarus are unfolding rapidly, but they have been going on for years, which critics describe as a ridiculously fraudulent presidential election no later than Nine August, after which the electoral government declared that more than 80% of the vote went to Lukashenko.galvanized a mass opposition movement only in the capital, but also in the most remote countries.towns and cities of the country of nine.5 million inhabitants.
Over the next week, the authorities’ harsh measures opposed nonviolent protesters: beatings in the streets, horrific arrests for thousands of detainees, most of them released from teachers, teenagers and retirees.
Echoes of the uprisings beyond the end of the Soviet regime of the 1980s are radiating throughout Belarus, where Lukashenko, a brilliant animated film by a Cold War autocrat who took strength in 1994, faces the ultimate pronounced risk of his political life.
In Poland and Romania, anti-government uprisings that might have been summarily stifled otherwise accumulated an unstoppable force when staff, politically repressed across the state like other citizens, but rewarded for a long time with strong employment and a diversity of paternalistic benefits, launched their tasks with the forces of social and political change.
In Poland, the Solidarity syndicate born at the Gdansk shipyard sounded the communist regime’s metaphorical death sentence, with tanks and martial law proving unable to suppress the movement.opposed to the brutal government of Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator of a lifetime and his wife, Elena, were executed through a firing squad on Christmas Day 1989.
In Belarus, Lukashenko’s sense of betrayal has been aggravated by his mismanagement of the worsening coronavirus epidemic in the country.Close paintings in giant state factories and a near-total lack of precautions have led to widespread infections at commercial sites, human rights teams say.
“Under such conditions, other people no longer feel that the state is providing them with protection,” said Anais Marin, an analyst at uk expert group Chatham House, who also serves as special rapporteur on Belarus for the Council of Europe.United Nations human rights.
Analysts also said that staff, many of whom were already angry at moves to privatize state-owned companies and sell them to Russian interests, were dissatisfied with Lukashenko’s request for help from Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend. foreign aggression, but omitting any mention of helping the president counter internal threats.
The leaked and widely disseminated video and audio of Lukashenko’s fatal meeting Monday at the MZKT state factory, which manufactures army vehicles, showed how he misconfided a flexible reaction to the tumultuous events of the following week.
“They’re talking about unfair choices,” he said in a moment.Instead of challenging, unsurprisingly, the staff he heard shouted, “Yes!
Lukashenko rejected requests to review the August 9 vote, which many say was won through her main rival, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who fled the country under government pressure but accumulated for exile in neighboring Lithuania.
In a video Monday, perhaps the boldest to date, Tsikhanouskaya declared herself the genuine winner of the election and presented herself to serve as interim leader in the run-up to a new vote.
Marin, the analyst, said that despite the abundant symptoms of discontent, it is difficult to tell whether the state staff seeking Lukashenko’s dismissal was firmly in most or simply the loudest.
“Each company has its own balance of strengths,” he says. It’s very volatile.”
In recordings made at the vehicle factory, Lukashenko – classical authoritarian language – sought to justify the harsh crackdown on protesters, telling staff that without such a deployment of force, “there would be no country.”
But he gave the impression of being moved by the obvious spread of challenging narratives, despite the government’s efforts to diminish social media and prevent foreign hounds from covering elections and their consequences.
On Monday, Lukashenko saw a factory employee who was looking to record the scene, a gesture that could recently have been sympathetically noticed as a sign of tribute, an employee’s respectful preference to remain reminiscent of his non-public encounter with the almighty leader..
This time, the president shouted, “Leave your phone!”