It was one man's choice in Belarus elections: Moscow or Europe

“Lukashenka has proved to everyone that he is shifting towards the East”, political commentator with the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza Waclaw Radziwinovicz told the European Radio for Belarus.

“It was clear that the essence of this election was to elect the “chamber” as you are saying… It was a choice of one man who was choosing between Moscow and Europe. By having not allowed the opposition members to make it into the parliament, he proved he was moving to the East. He showed that Moscow was his choice”, Radziwinowicz said.

Did this election differ from the previous campaign? Political analyst Uladzimir Matskevich reckons that the polls were carried out according to the old scenario. There is an election technology which has worked very well for the past 15 years. During the next elections, the authorities will not have to worry about the results at all.

The only difference is that it has become clear that there is no opposition capable of resistance in Belarus.

“Opposition candidates were indeed more or less loose to campaign. Everyone understood that there is no organized opposition to struggle for the electoral base. This is a difference; this is obvious”, Matskevich said.

He is confident that even if the authorities made the vote count more transparent, the outcome would not have differed much from the official results. Yury Shevtsov, a political commentator, shared a similar view in an interview with the European Radio for Belarus.

“The outcome of the election for the opposition means that even those figures, not announced by the authorities, are too high for the Belarusian public”, he said.

This election was more democratic than previous campaigns, Shevtsov believes.

“Why? Opposition candidates took part in almost all the constituencies. There were less dirty technologies used by the government against opposition candidates. In this regard, the polls were more democratic. The background of the election process has greatly reduced the conflict between the government and the opposition and between the government and the West”.

According to Yury Shevtsov, Europe should recognize this election; otherwise the Belarusian opposition could become too radical.

Meanwhile, OSCE has not recognized the polls as democratic. We are yet to see how Europe will behave and what the Belarusian authorities and the opposition are going to do.


Photo: www.ucpb.org