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ALEH NOVIKAU, MINSK
CONCTRACT OF THE THIRD TERM
“Political battles are over”, said Aliaksandr Lukashenka summing up the presidential election campaign that held the Belarusians’ attention for three months. But the situation in the country is still far from being stable.
Evidently, neither the authorities nor the opposition is able to reach an undercover consensus according to which they are going to co-exist after the March 19 elections. The previous format of the relations between the authorities and the opposition had the following simple formula: the opposition exists in a subculture, launders grants, creates coalitions of small parties, and arranges legal education seminars for women. The government does not prevent the opposition from its harmless activity, simultaneously promoting itself as a political alternative to terrorists, drug addicts, sexual minorities and all that sort of folk, which, as the official version has it, form the core of the opposition.
But the 2006 election campaign has ruined the usual lifestyle in Belarus. Lukashenka, who was probably frightened by the color revolutions in different parts of the former Soviet Union, broke off the convention unilaterally. The opposition has undergone a wave of repressions. As a result, the main task, which has been set by the authorities, seems to be achieved: the jeans revolution, which democrats spoke so much about, has failed.
But…
By conducting mass police arrests under farfetched pretexts, refusing to give the prisoners’ relatives any information and forbidding them to bring packages, backing up special squad soldiers who beat people up in front of the cameras, the authorities involuntarily aroused the people’s sense of civil dignity. The relatives and friends of victims of the political repressions as well as those just sympathetic began display some initiative, for example to escort all of the patrol wagons coming out of prisons, in order to know where the prisoners are transported.
Gradually, the one-time actions acquired organizational format. Even a local analogue of the Argentine “Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo”– association of mothers whose children “disappeared” under the military dictatorship of the 1970s – has been created. Practically every day in Minsk the flashmober actions take place, such as flower-laying to the Polish embassy to spite the picket of the young adherents of Lukashenka. The next phase of the movement is quick politicization of the masses, which questioned the “efficiency factor” of radical leaders’ preventive arrests. Despite the fact that all of the active opposition leaders are put into prisons, thanks to neophytes, the brands of their organizations are widely represented in the opposition’s actions.
The government did not expect such a scenario and now it feels ill at ease.
The point is how to turn down the heat of the political emotions and to return to the good old days when one stunning success followed another.
Actually, the opposition wave may be cut down through some concessions or something like talks as it was after the constitutional crisis in 1996. But the present authorities’ positioning is quite different from the situation of 10 years ago. Now, after 10 years of “shattering victories” in all spheres, a dialogue with “a small group of political adventurers” will greatly distress the regime’s prestige. The same attitude will be displayed towards the news about granting opposition just a bit of freedom, which it had before the elections, like subscribing to the opposition editions.
We should wait until the political fever finishes by itself. But it seems to be difficult to stop the repressive machine. The opposition’s habitus may not stay ignored: otherwise, it will be considered a sign of weakness. An extra factor for police zeal has appeared – the expected EU’s sanctions, which are likely to concern the authorities and even government journalists.
Now many security officials and judges involved in the repressions clearly see: “They, their families and people close to them have nowhere to retreat”. But the opposition is in the same situation. A student, who has been expelled from a university for his political views, increases the number of oppositionists in Belarus by, at least, five people: his family, relatives and friends. An anonymous author of the leaflet “Resist!” (a new initiative of the grass-roots organizations) believes that speaking to the representatives of the state bureaucracy should be as follows: “Boycott and condemn them! Do not greet them and minimize the contacts with them!”.
It is worth noting that even if those regime’s adversaries will have a change of heart towards Lukashenka’s adherents, they will do it not due to Milinkevich’s directions. As the number of civil initiatives is growing, it becomes evident that the “single” opposition and social democrats do not control the new generation of the resistance participants, and in the event of consultations between the opposition and the authorities the problem of powers will be inevitable. For the time being, a new pole of the Belarusian opposition is anonymous, but in the near future we expect declaration of a brotherhood of the camp participants. Because of a good hype in the mass media the camp “fighters” became popular and now they are able to bring into existence a semblance of the Ukrainian party “Pora”.
So probably the jeans revolution has lost the battle, but there is no atmosphere of peace in the country. On the contrary, the elections, which took place on March 19, stimulated the swift process of the political polarization of the citizens and it is necessary to prepare a new social contract to quiet them. If the authorities do not agree to that, it will be appropriate to ask: how quickly will the political split take place and when will the situation reach its climax?
The author is a columnist of the Belarusian weekly newspaper “Nasha Niva”.
April 4, 2006
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