The government is dreading the upcoming elections for the House of Representatives and local soviets (councils) scheduled for February 25 next year. The 2020 presidential election, which ended in an outbreak of mass protests, has left a deep scar on the Belarusian leader, which still hurts after three years, so he views the election campaign as a military operation.
Dirty tricks by “fugitives” and “Westerners”
On November 2, Ihar Karpienka, chairman of the central election commission, suggested at a meeting with defense officials, “We need to put a certain barrier against external interference and possible attempts to destabilize the work of election commissions and polling stations during the voting period, as well as against efforts to stir up tension during the election campaign.”
On October 17, Karpienka held a meeting with the internal troops command and called on generals and officers “not to allow the work of polling stations to be paralyzed” during the upcoming elections.
On October 18, Mikałaj Karpiankoŭ, deputy interior minister and internal troops commander, said that on the election day the internal troops would monitor and, if necessary, suppress “certain movements in the Polish and Lithuanian clubs where our ‘fugitives’ serve.”
Although political parties are normally the key players in elections, the top election official talks to the military, not party leaders. The government runs the election campaign as if it was a military operation.
In almost every public speech, Alaksandar Łukašenka mentions the upcoming elections as a major threat. In particular, on October 26, at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he claimed that “Westerners” were preparing “to overthrow us here on the eve of the parliamentary election.”
Opposition has no revolutionary plans for election day
The election campaign in Belarus is of no interest for the West, the opposition or the Belarusian public.
Opposition parties and civil society have been completely crushed, both legally and politically. Little has been left of government election window-dressing. The opposition has no strategic plans to use the forthcoming campaign to overthrow the government.
Opposition leader Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja said, “We are not participating in Łukašenka’s election – it is illegal, but we should use it as an opportunity to talk about our alternative. Such an alternative should be the election for the Coordination Council.”
If the government forces people to go to the polls, the opposition leaders would call on Belarusians to vote against all candidates. The tactic poses no threat to the regime because it lacks a mobilizing element. Minsk has nothing to worry about – the electoral process has finally turned into a bureaucratic procedure, a technicality, a ritual.
Nevertheless, the government gears up for the elections as if for a war. Why?
The point is that elections are by nature a complex and contradictory process. They are held even in dictatorial regimes that hold power by force. Violence requires legitimacy, and this is something that elections provide.
2020 wound would not heal
Elections have always had a special meaning for Łukašenka. The 1994 presidential race gave him the mandate to govern in the name of the people. His entire mythology of the “people’s president” was based on that victory.
He boasted for many years that he was elected by the people. He used to claim that during the 1994 election even sick people got out of bed to vote for him because they finally saw their candidate.
Łukašenka abused the people’s mandate to establish an authoritarian regime, ignoring or neutralizing other state institutions, breaking laws and shaping the state system to suit himself and his personal needs. Elections in Belarus have lost their practical meaning, but remained a necessary ritual. The government officially recognized the people as the source of power, spoke on their behalf but turned a deaf ear to voters.
During the 2020 presidential election, the Belarusian people attempted to exercise their right to elect their leader, which was enshrined in the Constitution but seemed to have been long forgotten.
Łukašenka has eventually managed to stay in power, but since then, the very word “election” is like a bad dream, a natural disaster or a horror movie to him. The incumbent was obsessed with the idea to get rid of elections altogether, or at least to delay them for as long as possible.
In violation of the Constitution, local elections scheduled for 2022 and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2023 were both postponed until 2024. There have been no elections in Belarus for more than three years. During this time, Łukašenka hoped to heal his mental wounds and psychological traumas of 2020.
Meanwhile, the new version of the Constitution makes the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, a gathering of government-picked candidates, a key authority in the country.
In August 2022, Łukašenka revealed that he considered abolishing presidential elections based on universal suffrage and authorizing the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly to pick presidents.
“I am increasingly coming back to the idea that I rejected when the Constitution was adopted,” he said. “I have studied the system of party building and elected bodies around the world. We should have taken the risk to propose that people elect the authorities, and especially the president, at the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly. To some extent, the presidential election rocks the boat, and a number of countries have a different system. Take China for instance, the head of the country is elected at the All-China People’s Congress . . . We would have survived. We would have worked quietly. And the parliament would have been elected by constituencies, as it was before. We missed it, but it’s not a disaster. If necessary, we will return to it.”
Back to the Soviet model
The abolition of universal suffrage would be the final stage in the authoritarian system’s regress to totalitarianism. Łukašenka began with building a populist plebiscitary regime, based on public support, but he may end up abolishing elections.
The system already relies solely on the state apparatus, law enforcement agencies and violence.
Apparently, Łukašenka is psychologically ready to stop imitating democracy and presenting himself as the “president elected by the people.”
But he does not dare to completely abolish elections. After all, Belarus sits in the middle of Europe. Elections always make international headlines. A parliamentary election was recently held in Poland. The United States holds a presidential election next year. Even Russia is to hold an election. If elections are abolished, not only the people, but also officials will understand that Łukašenka is afraid of them.
On February 25 Belarusians are expected to vote in parliamentary and local elections. The procedure will be very similar to Soviet elections – without opposition, alternative candidates or independent observers. There will be no polling stations abroad, no curtains on the polling booths, and the composition of election commissions will be classified.
But officials are still worried. There is no understanding in top echelons of power of what is going on in society, because there is no feedback from voters. That is why the government exaggerates the danger and sees the election as a military operation.