From Instapundit (mar. 19): LUKASHENKO WINS, OPPOSITION CHARGES FRAUD:
Iron-fisted incumbent Alexander Lukashenko was headed to an overwhelming win in Sunday's presidential vote in the former Soviet republic of Belarus, the elections chief said. Thousands of opposition supporters protested the results in the city's main square.Read the whole thing.
The protesters chanted "Long Live Belarus!" and the name of the main opposition candidate, Alexander Milinkevich. Some waved a national flag that Lukashenko banned in favor of a Soviet-style replacement, while others waved European Union flags. Milinkevich arrived later. . . .
Lukashenko had vowed to prevent the kind of mass rallies that helped bring opposition leaders to power in former Soviet republics Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan following disputed elections.
The use or threat of force neutralized opposition efforts to protest vote results in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan last year, and a bloody government crackdown in Uzbekistan left hundreds dead.
"It will be a peaceful demonstration. We will come out with flowers," Milinkevich said after voting at a school. "We do not intend to elect a president on the square. We will tell people the truth."
From Timothy Garton Ash:
What's happened there so far? (I write on Monday March 20, at midday.) In a European country, an election has been conducted that clearly was not free and fair. The regime of President Alexander Lukashenko monopolised the state-controlled media and threw a third of his main opponent's campaign managers into prison. A state-sponsored exit poll (the only one allowed) declared, while voting was still going on, that the incumbent president had more than 80% of the vote. The regime also effectively shut down the one major independent newspaper. Imagine if in 2004 the Bush administration had controlled all the TV networks in the US, thrown a third of Kerry's campaign managers into prison and closed down the New York Times. Free and fair? You're joking.
That much we know. But there's an awful lot we don't know. For example, it's clear that President Lukashenko does enjoy a significant level of popular support, not least because, using cheap imported Russian energy, he has improved many people's standard of living. But how much support he really has we cannot know, because there are virtually no independent media and no independent polls. That's the Orwellian trick: when you can't even know what the reality is.
Last night, thousands (estimates of exactly how many varied considerably) of people turned out in freezing cold on Minsk's October Square to protest at what they saw as a rigged election and to call for freedom. Some of them carried the European flag. A key question now (Monday midday) is: will they turn out again tonight, as opposition leaders have called for? In larger numbers or smaller? And will the KGB (still so called in Belarus) treat the protesters as "terrorists", as its boss has threatened?
I hope we don't end up like Belarus. because we're slowly inching towards that kind of state.
From STrategyPage:
March 19, 2006: President Alexander Lukashenko received 83 percent of the vote, and remains head of the country. Lukashenko has been in charge since 1994, when he consolidated power in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the creation of Belarus. Lukashenko is a Soviet era official, who runs Belarus like the Soviet Union still existed. Belarus is a police state, where elections, and everything else, is manipulated to keep the politicians in power. It's a tricky business, but so far Lukashenko has kept the security forces up to snuff, and on his side. He bribes or bullies key officials to keep the country running. Lukashenko has maintained good relations with Russia, getting him cheap fuel supplies and other aid. Lukashenko initially won clean elections as a reformer and clean-government candidate. But he slowly went bad.
At least Lukashenko won at least one presidential election. But the longer they stay in power, the more corrupt they become, ano?
Publius Pundit: Come with Flowers
The government has been busy. Over the last few days up until this very moment alone:
- Some 300 opposition activists have been detained and given sentences extending just past the election date.
- Arrested and beaten one of the opposition candidates, Alexander Kozulin.
- Destroyed hundreds of thousands of copies of independent newspapers.
- Expelled independent election observers from Georgia and other countries.
- Hacked and blocked opposition internet sites.
- Lukashenko himself has threatened to “twist their heads off,” referring to potential opposition protestors.
- The head of the KGB has threatened opposition demonstrators with the death sentence, and charged that they are planning a military coup.
- I received a press release from Gallup stating that it was impossible to conduct a reliable exit poll in the country, and that the two pro-government groups releasing exit polls favoring Lukashenko above 80% only interviewed three people per polling station.
- Forced a significant portion of the population to vote days early, making the results that much easier to forge.
- Cases of more than one ballot paper being handed to voters has been witnessed at most polling stations, along with the boxes themselves not being sealed.
Naku po, Belarus ba yan o Pilipinas? LOL.
Btw, napapansin ko sa mga rallies na umaabot lang sa 10,000 ang mga nagra-rally dito. some say 30,000 raw pero mukhang inflated ito.
Day 2 of Publius Pundit's reporting: "The Police were Smiling"
UPDATES: Ivan Lenin is translating LiveJournal reports from Minsk-based lipski, as well as others. He reports that several thousand people are on the square and they finally have proper amplifying equipment for the sound system. He says that right now there are up to 7,000 people and there doesn’t look to be many more coming. The police have also confiscated some tents. Hard to confirm just about anything right now and even worse, the people on the square right now don’t know what the government is doing outside the square to prevent people from going there.
Arroyo's CPR works!!! Applicable siya around the world! Now dictators and tyrants around the world will study this new form of crowd control to prevent future “people powers.”
at least it’s a better alternative and less deadly than china’s “tiananmen option”, no?
We Filipinos may have "invented" people power. We also invented it's antidote, called Calibrated Preemptive Response.
Galing talaga ni Arroyo.
The White House is calling for new elections.
If you check Publius posts, you'll see people putting up tents, kasi doon sila matutulog. Nice idea. Long live People power!
From instapundit: THE EUROPEAN UNION has denounced Lukashenko's victory in Belarus as fraudulent
EU ministers endorsed the damning findings of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s 476-strong observer mission.
The mission’s report found that Mr Lukashenko had “permitted state authority to be used in a manner which did not allow citizens to freely and fairly express their will”.
It said statements by the Belarusan KGB associating the opposition with terrorism and accusing it of planning a coup had led to a "climate of intimidation". Campaign workers and opposition figures had been subject to "physical assaults, detention and even imprisonment."
Basahin nyo rin itong blog ni BR23 at Veronika Khoklova
Day 3 blogging from Publius: “OUR PROTEST WILL BE LONG AND POWERFUL!”
A thousand or so Belorussian freedom fighters camped out in October Square all night without much food, tea, or things to keep them warm. Because the police wouldn’t let anyone help or join them. They survived the below-freezing temperatures and the threat of a bloodbath. These protestors swore to be there for good and they are, holding their ground all night and now all day. Having survived, what happens next is crucial.
The protest on March 20 seemed to gain, in physical numbers, only about half the number of people as on election night. There were likely no more than 6000 people at any one time.
That’s because an even stronger force of riot police than the night before unloaded at Karl Marx St. and dispersed throughout neighborhoods surrounding October Square, preventing pedestrians from joining the current protestors. When people left to bring food, they would not be allowed to re-enter. Those not close to a group were arrested; some 110 people are now on trial. The authorities even shut down the trains. The sheer number of people trying to see what was going on and all of the cars that honked while passing by shows that these protests have awoken the Belorussian heart and mind to the idea that they are not all that different from the free people of the world.
Milinkevich has called the people out once more to rally at October Square today at 6:30 p.m. They will join the ardent activists who stayed all night and set up a small tent city. The success of the actual gathering will depend on if people can physically reach the square. But regardless of what happens today, thousands of people have finally connected with each other like they never have before. These connections will continue to grow between likeminded people until one day — if not now, then eventually — Belarus is free.
Haha. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines would have been proud of the job being done by the Belarus Police Dispersal squad.
Classic "Calibrated Preemptive Response" strategy. Brilliant.
Now all Lukashenko has to do is to declare what is happening a "coup" or a "power grab" and declare a "state of emergency". then use the police to crack down on the opposition coup plotters and the critical media for "inciting to sedition"
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey: "Last week, Belarus threatened protestors with death for political "terrorism". Now they can't scare them off the streets, and the security forces seem unable to shut down the calls for new and proper elections. Keep watching, because either Belarus is heading for another velvet revolution in the footsteps of Ukraine and Georgia, or it's heading for a Tiananmen Square disaster."
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