Nearly six months after massive street protests for a rigged presidential election were met with relentless and violent repression by its riot police, Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko is still clinging to power and seems more determined than ever to overcome his impasse with much of the country’s population.
A meeting scheduled this week, in which Lukashenko initially promised to make genuine concessions and perhaps even negotiate an exit from power, is expected to be a loyal assembly that will stamp the president’s plan to remain in charge. The so-called All Belarusian People’s Assembly, planned for Thursday, is unlikely to result in any real political change, observers say.
“Lukashenko has apparently decided that he has already won and can now back down on some of his promises,” said political analyst Artyom Shraibman, from Minsk. “For now, it looks more like a routine meeting of legalists. But we cannot exclude the possibility that Russia will insist on something more ”.
At the height of the protests last August, Lukashenko’s days seemed numbered, as hundreds of thousands of protesters across the country demanded new elections and supported the idea of a transitional government led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of an arrested presidential candidate who opposed Lukashenko in the vote.
Lukashenko eliminated the immediate threat with violence, arrests and harassment of protest organizers, and gained reluctant support from the Kremlin, which seemed to believe it was a better option than agreeing with the power of the street.
After a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko said he would proceed with constitutional reform to ensure a smooth transition to a parliamentary system of government, but after a few months of semi-conciliatory rhetoric, he has returned to form in recent weeks, threatening a new wave of violence.
“Many have already understood that we are going to act firmly in the defense of the country. And the rest will understand … I will defend the country at any cost, whether in a tank or with a machine gun in hand, ”he said at a government meeting last week. A recording was also released in which a deputy interior minister talks about the construction of a prison camp for protesters.
The riot police and the KGB, who remained loyal to Lukashenko, embarked on a scorched earth policy against everyone involved in organizing protests. Hundreds of people remain in prison, while thousands have left the country, with many politically active Belarusians now based in Warsaw or Vilnius. The vast weekly rallies of autumn have become a thing of the past, with local outbreaks of protest only minor.
“The dynamics have changed since September and October, but we are still seeing the system rotting. We are trying to stimulate this process and create channels to increase the number of defections, ”said Franak Viačorka, aide to Tikhanovskaya.
But the inner circle around Lukashenko proved to be loyal and willing to crack down on both protesters and journalists covering the terrible events. Dozens of Belarusian journalists were targeted by authorities, while foreign journalists were denied accreditation.
Tut.by, Belarus’ largest independent news portal, has lost its legal media status, while one of its journalists, Katerina Borisevich, has been in prison since November. She could be sentenced to prison for the alleged crime of leaking medical data after she revealed that a protester who was beaten to death by bandits linked to the regime was not, as the official version states, drunk at the time.
“It looks like a theater of the absurd, but it is happening to us in reality,” said Maryna Zolatava, chief editor of Tut.by.
In the months since leaving Belarus, Tikhanovskaya met with several Western politicians and was treated as the country’s legitimate leader. She declared February 7 an “international solidarity day”With Belarus, but over time it has struggled to maintain its influence within the country. Most of the leaders of the “coordinating council” she created to oversee a power transition were arrested or forced to flee.
Although Tikhanovskaya has the support of most of the EU, Moscow does not yet seem ready to abandon its troubled ally Lukashenko. The Kremlin is concerned about revolutionary change, especially now that it faces its own wave of protests after Alexei Navalny’s return to Russia, and has accused the West of meddling in Belarusian affairs by embracing Tikhanovskaya.
“We are trying to show that the coordination council is still the best option for Russia and we are fighting Moscow’s fears. We are trying to explain that the situation is not about geopolitics, but unfortunately, month after month it is becoming more about geopolitics, ”said Viačorka.