January 15, Pozirk. Presidential candidate Siarhiej Syrankoŭ used a significant part of his second radio address to praise Alaksandar Łukašenka, but also brought up a populist theme that might divert votes from Belarus’ long-time ruler.
The leader of the Communist Party of Belarus commended Łukašenka for blocking “privatization, shock therapy and destruction of social gains” of the Soviet period.
Łukašenka, who has been in power since 1994, “did not sell off our enterprises to foreigners and did not give them away to oligarchs, he did not divide collective and state farms,” he said.
Łukašenka’s “willpower and policy” saved Belarus from the fate of the Baltic states and especially Ukraine, and his victory in the seventh presidential election is “inevitable,” Syrankoŭ admitted.
The candidate is hoping to come second in the race to “be more involved in political decision-making and influence the content” of the next five-year plan. The runner-up must offer a program to ensure “the continuity and deepen reforms” conducted by Łukašenka, he said.
Syrankoŭ made one proposal that conflicts with the current government’s policy and may appeal to many voters—to replace one-year employment contracts with life employment to make it harder for employers to sack workers.
In his address, Syrankoŭ appeared to criticize another contender, Aleh Hajdukievič of the pro-government Liberal Democratic Party, for being pictured with a gesture of contempt in his election posters.
He is critical of private and foreign banks, calling for a gradual nationalization of the banking sector. The politician also supported the idea of building a second nuclear power plant in southeastern Belarus.
Another presidential hopeful, Hanna Kanapackaja, also addressed voters on the radio today, reading out her manifesto in Russian and Belarusian.
Belarus will hold its seventh presidential election from January 21 to 26, with the whole election cycle limited to just three months. The current campaign is taking place in a purged political landscape amid a new wave of crackdown on regime critics.
The five bidders are Łukašenka, his supporters Syrankoŭ, Hajdukievič and Alaksandar Chižniak as well as Kanapackaja.
The Belarusian opposition dismissed the election as a sham, noting that political reprisals prevent pro-democracy candidates from running and voters from freely expressing their will.
The country has not held a single free and fair election since 1996 by the standards of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
