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Belarus, a massive but poorly organized protest

2020-08-18T23:34:02.245Z


Improvisation and the lack of criteria to form the interlocutor body with Lukashenko weigh down the opposition


Protest in front of the entrance of the tractor factory in Minsk, this Tuesday.TATIANA ZENKOVICH / EFE

In Belarusian cities there are massive protests and in many factories in the country workers have gone on strike. However, in the structures that are formed and postulated to negotiate about the future with the leader Alexandr Lukashenko there is improvisation, clear criteria and organizational effectiveness are lacking.

This is the impression that EL PAÍS obtained as a result of three telephone conversations with three people critical of the regime (a politician, a political scientist and the leader of a journalists' association). To begin with, the regime, for the moment, is not willing to negotiate anything and the structures in the making, apart from the internal problems to get going, are faced with the lack of an interlocutor.

On Monday Olga Kovalkova, representative of the presidential candidate Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, released a list of more than thirty people (in one version 34 and in another 36), who form the so-called "provisional council" aimed at "developing a mechanism to ensure the transfer of power ”in Belarus. The list, which includes the Nobel Prize Winner for Literature Svetlana Aleksievich, is dominated by people from the world of culture (literature, film, art, music), quite a few businessmen, lawyers, and human rights and political activists. Of the large factories on strike it was only possible to identify one member, introduced as Sergei Makeikov, a "delegate" of a tractor factory. The makers of the list, which was commissioned by Tijanóvskaya, want to increase the number of its members to 65, but other figures are also given. "The coordinating council has not been fully formed and it is one of the many bodies that have been created and that are not very effective in holding conversations, although, on the other side (Lukashenko) we don't see anyone who wants to talk either," said Andréi Bastunets , President of the Belarusian Journalists Association.

"Lukashenko does not want to leave and everyone around him is standing firm, although there were some exceptions such as the former minister of culture or the ambassador to Slovakia," said Bastunets, who said he was himself part of the council. The president of the journalists' association says he is "skeptical of these populist organizations that are being formed." “A real mechanism is missing. I don't see effective coordination taking place, ”he says. In his opinion, "this week can be decisive" and "it will be necessary to see if state television goes on strike, where there are many undecided people because many journalists received flats and perks from the regime.

"Until now", Bastunets affirms, "the dialogue with the authorities has been an imitation without consequences, led by ministries such as Information and Culture." In his opinion "in the factories there are real protests but not strikes in the classical sense."

"We want there to be fifty members in this council that is formed by mandate of Tijanóvskaya, our elected president, who, as the only legitimate authority, will have to ratify the final list", says Anatoli Lebedko, head of the United Civil Party of Belarus and veteran activist who has been in prison many times. Lebedko explains that, in addition to the council, a "committee of three parliamentarians in charge of talking with the regime for the handover of power will be formed, and this committee will begin by negotiating the release of political prisoners and those who have been retaliated." "These talks would be better held with intermediaries such as the EU, the OSCE and other parliamentary organizations," he adds. The council decided not to release the names of the people who will make up the parliamentary trio, it reports.

Tijanóvskaya's lists do not include the electoral candidate Valeri Tsepkalo, who was forced to flee, nor his wife Veronika. It so happens that Tsepkalo, a diplomat, had called for the formation of a committee for national unity. "The coordinating council is preferably made up of people living in Belarus," says Lebedko.

“We have two parallel waves of protest that do not intersect. On the one hand, the strikes in the companies and on the other the people who go out into the streets. The real threat to Lukashenko is the workers, ”says political scientist Sergei Martselev. "In the coordination council there is no representation of a coordinating body of all the striking companies," says Martsélev, who in the past was team leader of the Social Democrat Nikolai Statkevich, currently imprisoned. In his opinion, "the strikes in Belarus are gigantic and they involve tens of thousands of people, but it is still not possible to speak of a strike by the entire state." The political scientist affirms that the administrative structures of the regime are "quite" monolithic and have not been divided and the labor movement still lacks leaders. "There is also no leader of the citizen movement because Tijanóvskaya cannot emerge as a leader from emigration," he points out. "People do not understand the coordinating council, they do not know by what criteria it was formed," he says.

According to article 89 of the Constitution of Belarus, if Lukashenko leaves his post, power would pass to the head of government, recalls Martsélev, although it would not be the case with the current one, Roman Golovchenko, being in office. Lukashenko has already described the coordinating council as an attempt to "seize power with all the consequences that derive from it."

In June, Lukashenko renewed the government, and the current prime minister, who trained at the Moscow Institute of International Relations, had been head of the military industry committee and ambassador to countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. According to Martsélev, Golovchenko is related to Víctor Sheiman, a close and veteran Lukashenko collaborator who was secretary of the security council and head of the presidential administration and one of the architects of Belarusian policy in relation to Venezuela. Tanker by training and veteran of the USSR war in Afghanistan, Sheiman is considered a member of the hard-line and remains an assistant to Lukashenko.

"We have a great opportunity, because the mobilization continues and there is the will to change, but there is no leader and there is an incomprehensible non-constitutional body with very different people," says Martsélev, who fears that in the end "we will have to negotiate a new constitution with Lukashenko and all the modest freedoms we get will be stifled because Lukashenko does not need free people, but submissive people, even slaves. He predicts that, in that case, "the youngest, the most capable and the most talented will leave Belarus." Bastunets goes further and fears that massive emigration could occur. end

This week is decisive. What can the West do? Rigorously assess the elections, stop "they do not comply with international standards" and say that they have been "non-legitimate elections." Introduce sanctions, but the EU is in a difficult situation here, because one thing is personal sanctions against those responsible for the excesses and others against companies that would affect the economy and the population. If Lukashenko remains, he becomes the guarantor of the vassalage of Belarus. If protests are quelled and the status quo is maintained , the West can expect a diaspora of Belarusians who will be forced into exile.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-08-18

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