BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

20/10/2008

Lukashenko has the last laugh on the EU

Author: Andy Dabilis

In Belarus, it's an unspoken rule that when sports-loving Dictator- President Aleksandr Lukashenko takes to the ice to play hockey, even against professionals, that he will score at will, his team will always win and he never gets checked into the boards, unless you'd like to be a guest of the state in prison for a long spell.

Now the European Union is playing by his rules too. When it comes to renegades, it's not the heat that gets to Brussels, it's the timidity of politicians who cave in, and Lukashenko, in power since 1994 and apparent President-for- Life, knew he could count on the EU to eventually lift its travel ban on him and his cadre of killer comrades, and they did, although no one took credit for it. The fake reason is that he released some political prisoners, except those who are dead and disappeared, but the real reason is that the EU is afraid that Belarus - already in Russia's camp because Lukashenko has long been in Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's back pocket so he can kiss his rear end - would lean toward Russia more after seeing what happened to Georgia, abandoned by the West.

It's a little late to think Lukashenko will agree to reforms because he dreams of being President of Russia, if he can only get that pesky Putin to vanish like Belarusian dissidents. Check his resume: he served in the Soviet Army, was the only deputy of the Belarusian parliament to vote against dissolving the Soviet Union, likes the idea of Russia-Belarus unification, thinks Hitler wasn't all that bad (he's right there, Hitler was a great painter, a whole room, two coats, one hour!) believes in absolute authoritarianism, was accused of sponsoring death squads to get rid of political opponents, adores Castro's 1957 Cuba and Hugo Chavez' 1957-Soviet-style Venezuela, is a world-class schizo-paranoid who banned television from filming him from the back because he's getting bald, is still upset he was taunted as a kid and is getting even for it and listens to no one, especially the United States or the EU.

Still, you'd think the EU would have waited a little longer before bending over frontwards for him, especially since his supporters won all 110 parliamentary seats in elections last month, but that's the kind of control Brussels likes, especially in its own offices and clandestine, closed-door dealings, so maybe they have a picture of him hanging there as a role model. He warned that anyone going to opposition rallies would "have their necks rung like a duck," and admitted rigging previous elections. Even the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which thinks Kazakhstan is a democracy, protested his complete dominance of parliament. And the lifting of the travel ban so that Lukashenko can fly into EU cities and buy Christmas presents for his reported mistress must seem a little lenient to Belarusian children who are banned from traveling for fear they will defect to democracies. Here's the deal the EU should have made: you lift your ban on the kids, we'll think about lifting ours, but then children don't have control of Russian oil pipelines that go through Belarus to the EU.

And apparently EU officials missed the news conference in Minsk five days before their decision, when Putin came there to whisper "gulag," in Lukashenko's ear and the suddenlycowed Belarusian leader quickly stammered, "We aren't selling our friendship with Russia." He did pretend to sell it to the EU though because he knows the phony defenders of democracy could be had cheap, although even he must have laughed to know they could be had for nothing. He had already established what they were and was just haggling over the price. Prostitutes charge something, but then comparing them to EU officials is an insult. To prostitutes.

Source:

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/90207.php

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