Lukashenko: Before 2025 election, ‘still afraid of the people’

Belarusians will cast their ballots for president on January 26. Officially, there are five candidates, but 70-year-old Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled the country for more than three decades, will almost certainly retain his seat.

While Vladimir Putin’s Russia tolerated a degree of open dissent, at least until the invasion of Ukraine, Lukashenko was described for many years as “Europe’s last dictator” – a reputation which didn’t seem to faze him.

The final and only dictator in Europe is me. Indeed, there are none anywhere else in the world,” he told Reuters in 2012.

Belarus’s opposition, the United States, the European Parliament and rights groups have dismissed the upcoming vote as a “sham”. Mass demonstrations erupted following the last presidential election in 2020, when widespread allegations of vote rigging were made public. Then, brutally, the authorities began to crack down on the system.

Experts and insiders say Lukashenko is driven by a “thirst for power” and, having been shaken by those demonstrations, the fear of losing control.

He has been fueled for 30 years by his desire for power. It does not let him relax for a second,” Valery Karbalevich, a political observer at Radio Liberty and author of an unofficial biography of Lukashenko, told Al Jazeera. He doesn’t picture his life without power because “power and life are the same thing.” ”

Born in 1954 in the town of Kopys in northern Belarus, Lukashenko, a self-confessed troublemaker at school, was a Soviet pig farm manager before becoming president. According to observers and those who worked under him, the leader is ruthless and distrustful, making occasionally outrageous claims like vodka and visits to the sauna helping to stop COVID.

“This man is capable of giving an order to kill if someone goes against him,” said Pavel Latushka, Belarus’s now-exiled former minister of culture from 2009 to 2012.

I spoke with him directly and he said, “If you betray me, I will strangle you with my own hands.” He later made a public comment to Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov in a recent [2024] interview. ”

Who is the leader behind Belarus’ election on Sunday, and what motivates him today?

Soviet nostalgia

Belarus, a landlocked nation of a little more than nine million bordering Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, was once part of the USSR. Like many leaders of former Soviet republics, Lukashenko’s political career began during that period. In contrast to them, Lukashenko was the only lawmaker in Soviet Belarus to vote against the country’s independence in 1991. He did not support nationalism.

Nostalgia for the Soviet era is reflected in much of Lukashenko’s governance.

“He lived in the Soviet Union for more than 30 years and now, he cannot go beyond that life experience,” said Karbalevich.

Lukashenko, then 39, won Belarus’s first, and so far only, presidential election deemed free and fair by outside observers in 1994. The independent candidate ran on a populist platform, pledging to root out corruption and railing against the “lawlessness” which he said held the country “hostage”. Immediately post-independence, Belarus suffered from a stagnating economy, corruption, inflation and racketeering gangs.

Lukashenko survived an assassination attempt on the campaign trail when his car was attacked by unknown assailants, though it’s unclear when exactly or whether he always had distrustful tendencies. Later, a state-television show claimed that high-ranking officials were at work with the attackers.

Lukashenko won approximately 80 percent of the vote, defeating the country’s first prime minister, Vyacheslav Kebich, who inherited the job after independence and under whom quality of life had deteriorated.

Within a year of assuming office, Lukashenko held a referendum that changed Belarus’s white-and-red flag to one closely resembling the old Soviet design. We have given you the national flag of the nation you fought, he told veterans of World War II. ”

He kept the collective farms open, ensuring the success of the agricultural sector, and maintained a planned economy with state monopolies over industry. Contrary to what is happening in Russia and Ukraine, where a few businessmen with connections to the government have prospered in recent years, this state-run economy prevented the emergence of powerful oligarchs who dominated national politics.

“At the beginning of his presidency, he was really popular,” explained Karbalevich.

He described how the public admired him as the people’s president and said, “He considered himself the people’s president.” ”

For instance, Lukashenko bragged about how bedridden war veterans flocked to the voting booths at a meeting of government officials in 2006.

‘Afraid to look him in the eye.

According to Karalevich, Lukashenko wanted to be remembered as the man who “created the Belarusian statehood” and a post-communist transition alternative, but he also wanted the state to have control over the economy.

To an extent, it proved efficient: unlike Russia, which was plagued by poverty and organised crime in the 1990s, Belarus was relatively safe and the inequality gap was narrow. The nation’s Gini coefficient, a measure of wealth inequality, maintains a better balance than that of its neighbors and even Western Europe.

Throughout, Lukashenko has tried to cultivate an affectionate, paternalistic image as “Bat’ka” – the father of the nation. He frequently takes part in “subbotnik,” the Soviet practice of giving unpaid volunteer work on the weekends, such as by working on a farm. He enjoys sport and fitness, and projected an image of a strong, healthy leader by playing hockey.

“Lukashenko enjoys evening events,” said Latushka, who worked directly under the president during his time as a minister.

“He gathered key officials, journalists, sports and cultural figures for closed parties on New Year’s, on the traditional Old New Year [January 14]. At first, there was an open part, and later  a closed one that could last until 6 or 7 in the morning with a Stalinist concert program while everyone gathers around the table and watches the performers. Lukashenko can drink a lot at these kinds of events, and he can then dance. He lives in a society that is hidden from view. ”

Early in his rule, Lukashenko’s leadership was quickly revealed to be another aspect.

“Fear. Officials sit with their heads down during meetings with him, Latushka said.

Everyone is afraid to look him in the eye. This system of power is paternalistic. As soon as he leaves, everyone’s heads will rise, everyone will start talking and acting differently. In public, Lukashenko is outwardly a very cruel person, capable of publicly humiliating anyone. He disregards the viewpoints of others. ”

Consolidating power

Lukashenko created a constitutional referendum within two years of taking office, ceding control of the security apparatus and parliament. The opposition alleged  widespread voting fraud, although it’s also possible a part of the citizenry, wary of the instability in neighbouring Russia, was indeed willing to grant Lukashenko those powers.

Then, in 2004, Lukashenko was able to win the presidency again and again through a similar referendum, giving him the right to run for office.

Uladzimir Zhyhar, a former detective and representative of Belpol, a group of exiled ex-Belarusian police officers who defected to the opposition after the protests of 2020, accused law enforcement of being, first and foremost, henchmen for Lukashenko’s regime.

“This is the system he has cultivated for 30 years,” Zhyhar told Al Jazeera.

“After the anti-constitutional referendum of 1996, the police, courts, prosecutor’s office, investigative committee and, of course, special services, obey [Lukashenko]. There is torture, there are illegal arrests, there are interrogations … and the main department for fighting organised crime, which if it concerns politically motivated crimes, they are allowed to do everything. Absolutely everything, regardless of human rights or anything else. ”

Between 1999 and 2000, four of Lukashenko’s political opponents went missing (PDF): former Interior Minister Yury Zakharanka; lawmaker Viktar Hanchar and his friend, businessman Anatol Krasowski; and journalist Dzmitry Zavadski. In 2019, an exiled member of a top organization that targets gangs admitted to participating in three of their murders and abductions.

Lukashenko has appointed loyalists to senior positions, both within the security forces and state-run industries. However, it appears he lacks complete trust in them.

“Lukashenko absolutely hates people who can be in some position of authority, and so he is constantly engaged in the rotation of personnel,” Zhyhar explained. And while former security personnel may occupy deputy positions at enterprises, they are never – “as a rule” – appointed to top posts.

“He is afraid that this former security operative, having certain knowledge, having a certain authority, will be able to form connections and pose a threat to him. ”

Between the West and Moscow

Early in his presidency, Lukashenko’s foreign policy echoed the old Soviet Union’s position during the Cold War. In support of Slobodan Milosevic, he retaliated against Western imperialism and traveled to Belgrade during NATO bombings. He and Boris Yeltsin, the president at the time, signed a Union State agreement in 1997, and he was deeply committed to Russian reintegration. Under terms which were never fully implemented, Russia and Belarus would have re-united.

According to Karbalevich, “Lukashenko wanted to unite Russia into one state and conquer it.” “Then, in the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin was unpopular in Russia as a president. At any democratic election, Lukashenko believed he could defeat him because he was old and ill. However, Lukashenko lost interest in integrating with Russia after Putin took office [in 1999]. ”

Vladzimir Astapenka, who served as a Belarusian diplomat to several Latin American nations in the 2010s, continued, “the initial relations between Lukashenko and Putin were very, very tense.” “They were like competitors, and Putin did a lot to move Lukashenko back to where he belongs. ”

Lukashenko used his position as the nominal Union State to snag concessions from Moscow, though. Belarus’s economy relyed heavily on Russian subsidies for cheap oil, which Belarus refined and sold both in Ukraine and the EU. Russia, meanwhile, imported vast quantities of Belarusian agricultural produce, such as milk and cheese.

Throughout the 2010s, the two sides remained cordial but disjointed, with Lukashenko quietly adopting a more Belarusian identity and even using Belarusian as his speech language in 2014 rather than the customary Russian.

Lukashenko has managed his personal interactions with Putin and Moscow, according to Yauheni Preiherman of the Minsk Dialogue Council on International Relations think tank. According to him, “I occasionally refer to him as the best Kremlinologist in the world because, regardless of whether we like him, his intimate knowledge of Putin and the rest of the Russian political elite makes him a very knowledgeable statesman in that regard,” he said.

At the same time, Lukashenko started reaching out to the West, for instance, in 2008 and 2015 ordering the release of political prisoners, after which the European Union (EU) in turn lifted some sanctions it had imposed over Belarus’s internal repression.

Belarus and Lukashenko flipped sides over the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed early in the conflict, when the conflict first started to elude Belarus as a neutral mediator in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The headline “Lukashenko, the last dictator of Europe, being only focused on ensuring his power inside the nation” is what you typically read in the mainstream of Western media. That makes him ideologically close to Putin, and that’s the end of the story,” Preiherman explained.

He contends that his interactions with Russia and the West are more complicated than that.

“With Russia, he has had both more conflict and cooperation, whereas with the European Union and the West, he has had less of both. And this is easy to explain,” he said. This is because Belarus’s structure is significantly more similar to Russia and dependent on it in many ways. ”

A diplomatic crisis erupted in the Union State’s still-unresolved issue in 2019. Putin urged Moscow to pursue reintegration, but Lukashenko warned that any such action would be seen as hostile, so the Kremlin responded by cutting back on its oil subsidies.

The next year everything changed.

‘Enacting vengeance’ against protesters

With more than 80% of the vote, Lukashenko won the 2020 presidential election, a ballot that the opposition thought was rigged.

In one of Belarus’s largest mass protests ever to occur, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets. They were met by truncheon-wielding riot squads. About 35,000 were arrested, and thousands were allegedly 15/belarus-systematic-beatings-torture-protesters” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>beaten or tortured in custody. At least one protester was raped in custody, and up to 15 protesters were killed during or in the wake of the unrest.

“For the first time, he lost,” Zhyhar said.

“He lost informationally. Because of the large crowds of people who had gathered in a chain of solidarity, he lost in the street. He lost, in fact, even at the elections themselves, because everyone saw the queues that were lined up to vote for [opposition candidate Sviatlana] Tsikhanouskaya. Everyone witnessed it. ”

“The authoritarian regime has become totalitarian,” Karbalevich said. “It is forbidden to criticise Lukashenko. The accuracy of the state line is unquestionable. If a person is found [doing that] in social networks, he or she is detained for this. Lukashenko’s behaviour has changed. Political organization has gotten more rigid.

The events of 2020 have traumatized Lukasenko. He is now cruelly executing the Belarusis who protested against him. ”

There are currently more than 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus, at least 10 of whom are held in solitary confinement. They include Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, chairman of the Viasna Human Rights Centre, and Sergei Tikhanovsky, husband of Tsikhanouskaya who now leads the exiled opposition from Lithuania.

“Lukashenko is well aware that not all the people against him have left the country, and he didn’t imprison everyone. And therefore, for four and a half years, we have been repressed,” Zhyhar said.

“We have no independent media, we have no independent trade unions, we have no independent NGOs, we have no independent courts, we have no independent law enforcement agencies. And most importantly, Lukashenko is still afraid of the people. Therefore, he does not reduce repression, he only increases it. ”

Hostage of his own system

The aftermath of the 2020 protests burned Lukashenko’s bridges with the West, as the United States, United Kingdom and EU imposed sanctions, while Putin supported him.

“The sanctions, when they were initially adopted, were proclaimed as a means to force Lukashenko and his government to lessen domestic repression, free prisoners, and launch an inclusive internal discussion with his opponents,” said Preiherman.

But on all those counts, the situation is much worse, he says. They have also created unintended consequences. “Lukashenko has had next to zero manoeuvring space in relations with Russia, [and] geopolitically, they have ensured that Russia is the only game in town,” he added.

The protests presented Lukashenko with a dilemma: share power with the people, or with Putin, reflects Karbalevich.

He and Putin agreed to share power, but now the West is convinced that Lukashenko isn’t a true master of Belarus and that he is just his puppet. I would not be so radical; Lukashenko is quite autonomous. But today, this union with Belarus and Russia is very close. ”

Lukashenko authorized Russia to launch the invasion of Ukraine from Belarusian territory after he refused to deploy troops in the conflict in February 2022. Lukashenko acted as a mediator between Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin, giving him the role of a peacemaker during the Russian mercenary Wagner Group revolt of 2023.

“From being competitors they became … I wouldn’t say friends, but allies,” Astapenka, the former diplomat, said.

And Lukashenko must have control over Belarus. ”

In January, Lukashenko signed a law preventing opposition leaders from contesting presidential elections, giving him lifetime protection from criminal prosecution, lifelong support for his family, and a law prohibiting his opponents from running for president.

“To an extent, he became a hostage of the system that he himself created,” Karbalevich said.

Source: Aljazeera