The recent presidential elections in Belarus have delivered another term for incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko.
This will be his 6th term since he was first elected in 1994, and accusations of vote-rigging and a supposed crackdown on opposition candidates has generated street protests and violence in Minsk and other cities.
The opposition has cried foul, and announced that Lukashenko cheated, and that their candidate, a housewife named Svetlana Tikhanovskaya won 70% of the vote. Her husband, who was a candidate, is currently in detention for financial crimes.
All this makes Lukashenko look undemocratic and dictatorial.
But where have we seen this before?
For all the paeans about democracy, and concerns about free elections and human rights coming out of Warsaw and other EU state capitals, it is laughable to think that these people care about democracy.
After all, look at Ukraine. The ‘pro-democratic’ opposition turned it into a basket case in every way imaginable. Ukraine today is in worse shape than it was 25 years ago.
Journalists have been killed, minorities treated with disdain, and neo-fascist nationalist fervor has been strong since 2014. Yet, the EU and US grand-poobahs say and do nothing about it. They just feed Ukraine money and weapons.
As for anyone who has to this point been spell-bound by the opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s cuddly gestures and playing victim, needs to check her platform.
She wants to take Belarus back to the early 1990s when oligarchs ran the place, and return to the western-imposed, neo-liberal constitution from before 1994.
She also wants to end the Belarus-Russia Union State and other cooperation, and give the country over to the US/EU/NATO gang.
Being an inexperienced shill, she would be a very easy play-thing in the hands of the western powers.
We can see that her bread is being buttered by the same thieves and con-men that put the creatures in Kiev in power.
In the aftermath of the elections, she went to Lithuania, an EU/NATO lackey. This is further proof of who controls her.
Besides, the opposition realistically has about 12% support, so the notion that the opposition candidate got 70% of the vote is questionable, at best.
These protests were standard fare during every presidential election in Belarus since Lukashenko came along.
And the line that Lukashenko has been in office too long and has gone stale are quite disingenuous coming from any politicians and pro-democracy activists in the west, as well as their Belarussian promoters.
Look at Poland. It has had pretty much the same people in government for 20-30 years. They just keep on switching parties and coalitions, and official positions.
Add to that the fact that the recent presidential elections there weren’t entirely on the up-and-up, with complaints about people being unable to vote overseas, other candidates not being given enough campaign time, deliberately being kept out of public television, and some smeared by the ruling PiS party.
The situation is no better in the US where the same faces have been around for decades and just keep on changing job descriptions. Biden, Pelosi, and their republican counterparts keep on popping up here and there. Different titles, but the same old stale agendas and no change worth talking about.
No term limits guarantee that many will die in office.
Both parties in the US are guilty of stonewalling 3rd party candidates and doing everything to keep them from having their say.
The president of Montenegro, a newly-minted NATO lackey, is led by a guy who has been in power for 20 years, but no complaints there from the pro-western crowd.
And what about all the dictators and sheiks in Arab Gulf countries that the US regimes do business with?
What about the zionist state in Palestine? The same guy, Bibi Nothingyahoo, has been prime minister for a total of at least a few decades now. Past officials there have moved from one position to another.
The situation is the same in many other countries.
The west doesn’t like Lukashenko because he refuses to be their puppet, and keeps Belarus on an independent course, refused to sell the country out cheap, and maintained good relations with Russia.
He is responsible for rejuvenating Belarussian society and economy, and today Belarussian education, healthcare, and industry is in good shape.
Belarus puts its Polish and Baltic neighbors to shame in some respects when it comes to economic performance, as Lukashenko did not just mothball and sell off public enterprises to western interests after the fall of the USSR. Belarus today still has something it can call its own, unlike Poland and other EU-member states which were forced to give up, sell off, and close down their industries.
Lukashenko seems not to want his efforts to go to waste, and it is why he’s acting as tough as he is. People need to understand this. Would you want someone else coming in and destroying what you have built over many long years?
Lukashenko may be at times unpleasant and crude, but he’s like that horrid-tasting, but effective medicine one has to take to get well.
Those who are protesting and striking in Belarus are not doing themselves any favors.
They are either naive fools who have bought western propaganda hook, line and sinker, or paid provocateurs sent to destroy the country.
These strikers and protesters are like the Polish KOR (Komitet Obrony Robotnikow) or Committee for the Protection of Workers. It was an opposition outfit sponsored by western powers during Poland’s socialist days. Their job was to induce strikes, gain control of factories in order to sabotage them, ruin Poland’s economy, and cause mass social discontent against the socialist government.
We are seeing similar things in Belarus today.
US and EU want to gain control of Belarus so they can turn it into an EU neo-colony, a NATO base, and another anti-Russian stick, like Poland.
In such a position, the Belarussian people will deeply regret it. Their jobs will evaporate, unemployment will soar, their industries will be sold off or closed down, the country will be saddled with IMF loans, picked clean for pennies, a productive and successful farming sector decimated, prices for everything will go up hundreds of percent while wages stagnate, or are lowered, and taxes raised and new ones created.
The loss of business with Russia will compound these problems many-fold, and all those empty promises of 2,000 Euros per month in salaries will prove to be just an illusion. Others were promised this, and ended up disappointed.
This is the same reality that resulted from the Maidan coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014.
Belarussians can expect the same thing. They are deluded if they think that the west will solve all their problems and make Belarus into some kind of a paradise.
With all the failures and problems in the EU and US, how can anyone believe in, and trust the empty promises of these two charlatans?
Belarus has no worthwhile, long-term future to look forward to as a US/EU/NATO lackey.
That is why all the Belarussian oppositionists and reformers are not worth a damn. They are sell-outs, and future oligarchs in reformist clothing.
Bear in mind that Belarus is the only country out of the former Soviet states that does not have a firmly-rooted oligarch class. Lukashenko prevented this, and this only helped the country’s development.
Lukashenko certainly can talk to the opposition, but any and all discussions, decisions, and reforms must benefit Belarussians, not some shady foreign interests and institutions.
And anyone who works on-behalf of the US and EU to the detriment of Belarus must be dealt with harshly. There is no room for such traitors and scumbags within Belarus.
There is also an element of danger to all this.
The US, EU, and especially Poland want to see Belarus incorporated into the NATO axis in order to pressure and confront Russia.
Poland specifically is on an anti-Russian, messianic mission to become the dominant power in Eastern Europe. It is a battle that it has fought, and lost to Russia 350 years ago.
This could lead to a future war in Central Europe. A war which Poland and NATO cannot win.
So if countries like Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states want to survive in any shape or form, they better stop meddling in Belarussian internal affairs, and stop stirring up problems and subversion. And they better not assume that because they’re in NATO that they will get through it unscathed.
So Lukashenko could very well be the boulder which prevents all this, so it’s best to leave him be. Better him than war.
Lukashenko has tried to steer an independent course for Belarus, and this has ticked off not only the US/EU gang, but Russia itself. But that is Lukashenko’s and Belarussia’s prerogative, and needs to be respected.
But there will be no Maidans in Belarus. These protests will fizzle out, and Belarus will remain independent. Lukashenko still has a decent amount of support and many Belarussians don’t want to see Belarus become another Ukraine, and a NATO/US lackey.
But if the EU and US provoke Lukashenko with sanctions and other such nonsense, then they will push him toward Russia-which is a better option anyways.
What is clear, is that the longer these so-called democracy protests go on, the more we see the usual suspects and paid promoters come out of the woodwork. They are exposing themselves to the Belarussian security services and police for an easy scoop-up.
Luakshenko's next order of business after this nonsense should be to alter the political and electoral system so that no paid foreign traitors have a chance of ever being elected, like in Iran.
There needs to be a vetting process to forbid any undesirable persons running for public office whose loyalties lie elsewhere. Heck, even the US has such a vetting process; and Russia just instituted one. As a matter of fact, all US vassal states have a controlled system to ensure that no one unfriendly to US/EU interests every governs there. So why not in Belarus?
It's quite strange that Lukashenko hasn't done this yet. If he did, it would've headed off a lot of problems for him and the country.
Lukashenko's problem is that he allowed himself to be co-opted and cajoled by the EU and US with favors and other enticements. But this was all done to get him to distance himself from Russia.
What happened was that Lukashenko ended up upsetting a major ally, and put himself at the mercy of western US/EU regime change brigade. Their aim was never to be cooperate with Lukashenko or help Belarus. Their mission was to cause problems between Belarus and Russia, weaken its economy, and create popular discontent. Their mission was always to get rid of Lukashenko and create another US/EU/NATO vassal state.
Now, Lukashenko has woken up and realized that he screwed up. He's trying to backpedal and has asked Putin for help.
Vladimir Putin isn't too happy with how Lukashenko acted, but will nevertheless help him.
Lukashenko better not allow such serious lapses in judgment as he has had in the past 5 years. He almost caused Belarus to go belly up like Ukraine.
After this nonsense settles down, Lukashenko has some major decisions to make.
