Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s challenge to Alexander Lukashenko can prove a turning point in the political history of Belarus as the trailblazer woman has got open support from Maria Kolesnikova and Veronika Tsepkalo to dethrone the only dictator of Europe
The people of Belarus have once again voted Alexander Lukashenko to power for the sixth consecutive term. He has created a history of sort by probably being the last dictator of Europe. He has been ruling the country since 1994. For more than a quarter of a century, Lukashenko has made Belarus his fiefdom, largely keeping all his rivals and opposition members, either locked in jails or ordering strong criminal investigations against them.
The latest election results show that Lukashenko, who has been ruling the country for last 26 years, obtained 80.23 per cent of the votes. His rival candidate, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, received only 9.9 per cent of the votes. It’s worth knowing a woman, a mother and a teacher of English who have dared to take on Lukashenko. She was forced to contest in the presidential election when her husband Sergei Tikhanovsky, a popular YouTube blogger, was jailed and barred from running the election. In fact, Sergei was arrested in May this year after trying to register as a candidate in the presidential race against Lukashenko. Later, he was charged with “organisation and preparation of a grave breach of public order”. After this, Svetlana had to move her children outside the country, fearing for their lives. Her husband was always critical of Belarusian authorities. He had been mobilising people and building an audience both by touring the country and through his speeches in YouTube. These platforms were supporting him for providing an outlet to his countrymen to ventilate their grievances against the Lukashenko administration and his quarter-century regime.
Her message to the Belarusian people during the election is clear: “I don’t want power. I want to get my children and husband (back) and I want to keep frying my cutlets. When you vote for Tsikhanouskaya, you vote for me not as for a politician, but you vote for upcoming changes and a new fair election”. While addressing the voters in the city of Gomel, she urged her countrymen to fight for change.
Unlike her husband, Tsikhanouskaya was a novice in politics. However, she was able to register as a presidential candidate against Lukashenko. This is indeed a huge success. Maybe it was allowed as the strongman knew very well that her political ignorance and the current Covid-19 pandemic will rarely offer her an opportunity to mobilise the masses. On the other hand, what was true was that she managed to stay safe till the date of the election as she was accompanied by a large number of supporters.
What is more interesting and largely gone unnoticed is that along with Tsikhanouskaya, there were two other women who also spearheaded the campaign against Lukashenko. The trailblazer woman was openly supported by Maria Kolesnikova and Veronika Tsepkalo. Unfortunately, Kolesnikova was the campaign manager for Victor Babariko, a banker-turned politician, who was initially expected to be the main contender in the presidential poll. However, things turned out otherwise. Babariko was arrested in June over accusations of bribery and money laundering. But Kolesnikova continued her work on the campaign trail and joined the campaign for Tsikhanouskaya. The third woman, Tsepkalo, represents her husband, Valery Tsepkalo, a former Belarusian ambassador to the United States. Her husband was forced to flee to Russia just before the election because of concerns over his security and his children. Simply speaking, this triumvirate has electrified the campaign and politics of Belarus. Lukashenko may have never thought that there could be a female challenge to his rule.
Once the election results were declared, both Tsikhanouskaya and Tsepkalo had to leave the country, fearing for extreme actions from the Belarusian authorities. Tsikhanouskaya has left for Lithuania. Since then she has been releasing short videos for the protesters in her country. But surprisingly, one of her latest videos, released in the pro-Government Telegram channel, called on her supporters to cease all protests. What emboldens the anti-government demonstrators in Minsk and in the rest of Belarus is Kolesnikova. Unlike the other two women, she has remained in Belarus.
Lukashenko’s claims of victory sparked massive and violent protests across Belarus. But why? Is it so that the Belarusians are simply tired of him seating in power for an indefinite timeline? Or is it so that people are yearning for popular democracy? It seems the populace is both tired and looking for an outlet to establish democracy in this erstwhile Soviet satellite state. May be many of them are fearing a Putin-style rule that may completely root out the element of opposition and civil resistance movements across Belarus. The protesters in the capital city of Minsk came out in thousands, shouting “Leave”. However protesters fight with the security agencies have come from at least 20 other cities, including Vitebsk and Gomel. After police violence against the demonstrators, what Tsikhanouskaya said meant a lot for both the civilians of her country and the democracy lovers of the world: “I want to ask the militia and the troops to remember that they are part of the people. Please stop the violence.”
This highlights the fact that for ages the uniformed men in many countries have been either forced or directed to pound on the ordinary people on the street. Her open appeal to the military is truly symbolic because authoritarian leader Lukashenko has been manipulating the support of them for decades in the name of maintaining stability in the country. The opposition in Belarus has stated that this election is full of malpractices. Many election and political observers consider the record number of early voters in Belarus as a major sign of heavy “ballot stuffing”. Around 40 per cent people voting before the polls started on August 9 clearly signaled serious malpractices in the election. On the other hand, many polling booths ran out of ballot papers on the day of the election.
For now, political observers and experts say that this is the biggest ever protest Belarusians have ever staged against Lukashenko since his arrival to power. Probably, John Dalberg-Acton, the 19th century English philosopher, politician and historian, known as the “magistrate of history”, was very right, when he said, “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely”. His iconic words remind all of us the corridors of power wherein a few hundreds muster, manoeuvre and grab the public resources and enjoy the same at the cost of the majority.
Meanwhile, Belarus has encountered the Covid-19 pandemic with a death of more than 548 and recorded more than 67,000 people as positive cases. But instead of offering caution and medical care, Lukashenko, in a televised speech claimed that 97 per cent of the Belarusians who contracted the virus recovered without showing any symptoms. He laughed off the pandemic and refused to lock down the country and finally advised people to drink vodka to ward off the illness. Such bizarre leaders still exist on this planet!
Even Belarus’s first leader, Stanislav Shushkevich, who took over the country just after independence from the USSR in 1991, voices concern over the future of his country. To him, Lukashenko can only offer state administration methods that are good for a collective farm and that is what he has been doing all those years. He has termed him as an ignoramus and rude person.
The writing on the wall in Minsk and around is clear: It’s time for Lukashenko to go. Making mincemeat of Tsikhanouskaya and the other two women contenders by him no way signals victory and winning a popular mandate in Belarus. Though technically, he has won a clear majority over his opponents, it’s always better to leave gracefully, without a rebellion or a massive social unrest. Such a scenario certainly helps a country like Belarus to sustain the current level of sustainability and peace. But leaders like Lukashenko may not heed the signal reverberating around. In a country like Belarus and many other nations those which are under the iron fist of demagogues, such civil uprisings can rightly be called as none other than a “waiting game”. It all depends how the Tsikhanouskaya-led call could be taken forward and sustained on the face of brutal military pressure. It’s just a prologue. And her one big step for leadership change would certainly go down in the political history of Belarus as a turning point. It’s the same people that will finally decide the fate of Lukashenko. He must remember the famous Latin adage: “Vox populi, vox dei” (voice of the people is the voice of God).
Politics is all about freedom and rights by engaging commoners at the centre of it. If it is not rightly pursued by any leader, how powerful he or she may be, political landscape would offer no space to him or her in the days to come. Hope the movement launched by the triumvirate does not pass onto oblivion!
(The writer is an expert on international affairs)
