On 25 February, Belarus held the first parliamentary elections since the 2020 mass protests and the crackdown on the opposition. Another presidential election will follow in 2025. While there is little interest in discussing the obvious outcome of these sham votes without any genuine opposition, it might be interesting to take a look at how Alexander Lukashenka has laid the foundations of these elections to ensure the extension of his unprecedented and unchallenged power after 30 years as Belarus’ president.
Lukashenka’s election preparations: a tight grip on power
For strongman-turned-dictator Alexander Lukashenka, last month’s election was important, but not for the reasons we might expect. Since 2020 the political tension in Belarus has steadily peaked, resulting in mass protests, a brutal crackdown on civil society and media, 1,500 political prisoners, including his presidential challengers and most significant resistance voices Viktar Babaryka, Syarhey Tsikhanouski, Nobel Peace Prize-winning Ales Bialiatski and many others.
This time, learning from his past ‘mistakes’, Lukashenka set up extraordinarily harsh circumstances for any form of civic activism, election monitoring or opposition manoeuvring. Besides hundreds of civil society, human rights and cultural organisations, he liquidated most of the political parties that could cause him any trouble, leaving only four loyalist parties for show. He banned voting abroad, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Belarusians. Lukashenka refused to invite any Western election observers, such as OSCE and chose to rely fully on the support of like-minded observers, such as the ones from the Kremlin-led CSTO. In January, he signed a new law granting him and his family life-long benefits and protection from prosecution, even in the case of leaving his position. He also banned any Belarusian citizen who has ever held a residence permit in another country and has left the country in the past 20 years from running in elections, thus barring the entire exiled opposition with a small legal tweak.
Lukashenka also eliminated the election turnout threshold to disable boycotts and banned photography or videography of ballots to kill online campaigns. He provided complete anonymity to the election commission members so that they could operate without public pressure. Lukashenka started to auction off the property of the exiled opposition figures and instructed security forces to train and prepare to disperse mass protests. The most vindictive repression measure, however, was raiding the homes of the 200 relatives of political prisoners, for whom the Belarusian diaspora had bought food. If this sounds surreal, it’s by far not everything Lukashenka and his attack dogs have done in the past months, less than 200 km from an EU capital, Vilnius.
The pseudo-campaign of Lukashenko
However comic it may sound, even Lukashenka needed an election programme to campaign on. In his case, however, the campaign was not built with the objective of winning the vote. Instead, it aimed to further his political agenda by pinning down the cornerstones of his vision, explained well by Belarusian political analyst Artyom Shraibman. Firstly, he presented himself as a hero who prevented Belarus from being dragged into wars and conflict, as the protector of ‘peace’ and the only president who could strengthen the military. Secondly, much like any other populist autocrat, he campaigned against any form of ‘Western/European ideas’, including LGBTQI rights and feminism. He presented himself as the defender of family values by almost forcing women to have kids. Thirdly, he focused on the economy and inflation by continuing to enforce price caps and introducing new wealth taxes.
What to look out for
The most important outcome of this election will be the materialisation of 2022’s constitutional changes and the appointment of a 1,200-member All-Belarusian People’s Assembly led by a 15-member committee called The Presidium. This Assembly will have almost absolute powers, including the appointment of judges in key courts, imposing martial law and even impeaching a president. No spoilers here, but according to the same constitutional amendments, only the first (and the only) president of Belarus, Lukashenka himself, can be the chairman of the 15-member committee and simultaneously President of the country till 2035. This All-Belarusian People’s Assembly will include representatives from the legislative, judicial and executive branches, local governments, as well as “civil society” (or what’s left of it).
It will be interesting to follow how this All-Belarusian People’s Assembly will function and how the balance of power will be split between Lukashenka’s allies in the security or civilian apparatus.
The state of the opposition in Belarus
Back in November, Shraibman wrote, ‘’There are not even any arguments among the opposition about whether to take part or not: it’s simply too dangerous.’’ Besides the obvious dangers of prosecution, transnational repression and the legal impediments to taking part in this election or the presidential one next year, Shraibman also said the exiled opposition “views the elections as illegitimate, because since 2020 they have deemed Lukashenko an usurper.”
Instead of participating, the leader of the Belarusian opposition Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya opted for doing what she does best – meeting foreign heads of state and high-level stakeholders, speaking on the world’s biggest stages and raising awareness about the dangers of Lukashenka’s rule for Belarusians and Europeans.
It is impossible to expect that Belarusians, having sacrificed so much in such a short amount of time, would risk their lives and freedoms to contest elections in which they don’t have a fair shot at winning. For any minor attempt of resistance, they have been and will be beaten, jailed, declared extremists, and even killed.
The future of Belarusian politics
Given a choice between unnecessary heroism and calculated long-term vision, the Belarusian opposition leans towards the latter. The best that Belarusian politician parties, civic activists and journalists can do now is to invest in the education and professional growth of the exiled community, build their networks inside Belarus, campaign for the freedom of their jailed peers and hope that there will come a brief moment when it will be safe to make a move.