BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

Friday, December 16, 2005

Belarus speeds up presidential race

By Steven Lee Myers The New York Times

MOSCOW The Parliament in Belarus voted Friday to hold the country's next presidential election in March, opening an accelerated campaign between the country's authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, and a beleaguered opposition movement.

The election will be a watershed for Belarus, which Lukashenko has led since 1994 with an increasingly repressive hand, reviving symbols and policies of the country's Soviet past, eroding personal and political freedoms and stifling all forms of dissent.

The democratic opposition - now unified behind a single candidate, Alexander Milinkevich - has called for a free election, but its leaders doubt one will take place. They have increasingly focused their attention instead on mobilizing people for mass protests like those in Ukraine last year after that country's fraudulent presidential election.

"If our campaign is effective, then we will get people out into the street," Milinkevich said in an interview this week while campaigning in the western Belarussian city of Brest. "This is the last chance for us, the last battle."

The election has raised the specter of a new and possibly violent confrontation over democracy following popular upheavals in two other post-Soviet states, Georgia and Ukraine, and suspect elections recently in two others, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

With 10 million people, Belarus borders new members of the European Union that have openly called for democratic change there, as has the United States. President George W. Bush called for "free and fair elections" in Belarus during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in May. The U.S. secretary of state, Condeleezza Rice, called Belarus "the last true dictatorship in Central Europe."

"It is time for change to come," she said in April.

Lukashenko is only eligible to run again because of a constitutional referendum last October that abolished presidential term limits, allowing him to seek office indefinitely. That referendum - approved, officially, by 77 percent of voters - was widely denounced as a fraud; an independent exit poll found that only 48 percent had voted in favor of abolishing term limits.

Lukashenko has responded defiantly to international criticism. With the election approaching, his government has put independent newspapers under new pressure by revoking their ability to be sold through state-owned kiosks or delivered through the state postal system.

The two houses of Parliament also toughened criminal penalties for organizing protests, joining banned organizations or speaking against the national interest. The legislation allows for prison sentences of up to three years for anyone convicted of advocating the overthrow of the government and up to two years for "discrediting the country."

The Parliament voted to set the election date, March 19, in a hastily called session. Under the country's Constitution, twice revised by Lukashenko, the next election could have been held as late as July.

But with Milinkevich's campaign showing signs of winning popular support, according to its own polls, many of his aides believed Lukashenko would move to compress the election campaign.

Nikolai Lozovik, a spokesman for the Central Election Commission, said in a telephone interview that the date had been set because of more prosaic concerns: "July is the time of vacations." He added that March elections were "an old Soviet tradition."

In a telephone interview after the vote on Friday, Milinkevich said the earlier election date would curtail his time to travel and meet voters - something essential to his campaign because of a blackout on state television and radio.

An abbreviated campaign could also limit the influence of foreign assistance, including nearly $12 million pledged by the United States to support civic and political groups, though not Milinkevich directly.

Source:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/16/news/Belarus.php