BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

15/05/2008

End of Lukashenko's Era

If you estimate the political activity of Alexander Lukashenko in terms of the balance of targets, resources and results, not democratic values, you should deliver a panegyric on him, no doubt.

For all the 14 year in power the President of Belarus has been quite popular. Though he is now unable to breeze through elections as he used to, and he has relied on the administrative resource to a greater extent, there is still no politician in the country to defy him.

Throughout all these years Mr Lukashenko has succeeded in securing Russian subsidies for his country. After a short failure of 2007 as Moscow seemed to have given up the game "gas for loyalty commitments," everything resumed its normal course. Today's relatively high price that Belarus pays for energy carriers, is compensated with a Russian credit. And one shouldn't presume that the financial dependence will ensue the acquisition of Belarusian assets by Russian companies. Russia should know that a big debt of a sovereign state is usually a problem of the creditor, rather than that of the debtor.

And Minsk is in no way going to abandon its sovereignty, challenging Moscow with it. Because even if the Russian-speaking and Russia-friendly Belarus is reluctant to carry on with reintegration, no other state will be eager to form a union with Russia.

It's unlikely that Mr Lukashenko really fears the West's economic mini-sanctions. As long as the oil refined at Belarusian plants is supplied to Europe without any problems, and as long as his country is a transit territory, he has nothing to be afraid of. The present obstacles can be easily omitted, taking into account that there are such states as Venezuela, China, Iran, and the Arab world.

Nonetheless Lukashenko can't help understanding that his time is ticking out. When Belarus was poor, common people and officials needed the Father of the Nation. But as the average salary grew and finally hit the $350 target, the country sank from the 53rd place (2003) to the 150th place (2007) in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. And corruption is always followed by uprisings of the masses and the end of the "fair government" myth, and then - degradation or betrayal of those serving the regime.

It will be more important that the Soviet times have gone for good. Lukashenko has reversed the "golden share" rule to attract European investors and prevent Russians from aggressively penetrating the Belarusian market. But when this money comes and faces the sentiments of the young generation that was brought up under the independent regime, one won't be able to deny the necessity to carry out real reforms.

Lukashenko can triumph in the 2011 and 2016 elections - it won't change anything. The era of autocracies in Eastern Europe has come to an end. That's why, regardless of the leader's effectiveness in terms of tactics, his regime will go down in the history of Belarus as a long phase of transition from a Soviet republic to a European state.

Arkady Moshes, Russian Programme Director with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs

Source:

http://www.kommersant.com/p891732/r_520/Political_portrait_of_Alexander_Lukashenko/

Google