NationStates Jolt Archive

http://president.gov.by/img/foto1.jpg
The President of Belarus
Link 1 (http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/24/news/belarus.php): New York Times Article on the current situation
Link 2 (http://www.president.gov.by/eng/president/profile/): Propaganda site of the President of Belarus

This March, the last dictatorship in Europe will NOT elect a new president. The same despot that has ruled the landlocked country since the fall of the USSR will win. But hopes are high that the country where the KGB still exists will experience a revolution like those recently seen in Lebanon Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. The symbol of the opposition, which has recieved much support from the EU and the US, this time are strips of denim, and the same anger at the regieme that existed before other color revolutions is definitely present. Like in other dictatorships, change probably won't be easy, and there is a good possibility of bloodshed. So, anyone have an opinion on what will happen? Will the last police state in Europe fall, or will President Alexander Lukashenko continue to have complete control over a country the size of Kansas? In my personal opinion, I think that between the support of various countries in the West and the discontent within Belarus itself, change will try to be made, but I'm not sure if it's a safe bet the country will democratize.

I saw an interesting French documentary on this and how the US, through people like John McCain, were involved in this and were fomenting these revolutions. They also portrayed how Russia, and supposedly Belarus, were very well aware of this and had started to counter this method by recruiting their own "pro-President" students and young people to counter the coloured uprisings and by pointing out the meddling done by the West, which of course only serves to polarise the populace in support of their nation and against the US.

So, umm, I'm not optimistic.

BTW guys, there is an article in The New York Times Magazine today about the issue that's worth reading if you are luck enough to have it.


It's not just the US. The EU, especially Germany and Poland, are working on his too.

I'm already laughing in advance at their disappointment with the even greater poverty that economic de-regulation will bring, and equally unresponsive rebuffs from their new masters. :p

Seriously, it's quite funny how naive people can be about something they idealise purely because they never experienced it.

I don't wanna say that it will fail, but I see no chance of it going antwhere for now. Not only is the opposition there up for activism with a bewildering regularity that should point to its futility, it's also that, well, they're very likely a minority.
Let's look at Belarus. The only thing it can provide to a free-market world is potatoes, and the population should be aware of that. The USSR justified nostalgia for it: Belarus was rather privileged by the Soviets, receiving more than it produced and benefitting from, shall we say, "positive discrimination". The USSR built towns from the ground up, and left its mark on the landscape in a way that would leave one looking for whatever was previously there (clue: that would be "a distant province of Poland"). Nationalism (as faulty as it always is) has a huge flaw: a Belarussian ethos wasn't really around before 1917, and is eternally divided between an artificial legacy of medieval Lithuania and the "Belarussian as some kind of Russian" one felt by (probably) most (and encouraged by Russia).
Lukashenka maintains all that can be maintained in that society and economy, frankly. I don't think Belarus could do any better (sadly).

Even in Moldova, where more reasons for opposition could be found, those who advocated union with Romania, that have actually been in power, could not manage to push their voters any further than waving flags and shouting (not to mention that their goal fails to deal with common sense). A communist party is now in power (again, nominally communist: communism inside the former USSR has more to do with various degrees of nostalgia for a supra-national entity, then it has with either communist ideology or, indeed friendship with Russia - for example, the Moldovan communists are at odds with Putin).