What would make me happy
This Sunday, Belarus will hold presidential elections. Most commentators expect the current president, Lukashenko, to win his third term in the office. I have little doubt that this will be the case.
Yet, I still have a faint hope that the times will change for Belarus. May be the opposition candidate Milinkevich will get considerable support. May be the Belarusians will dare to go out on the streets and protest the authoritarian regime… There have been examples in recent history – why not Belarus? That is what would make me really happy.
Alas, it will probably be another boring day in the history of Europe’s last dictatorship.
Here you can read about my Impressions of Belarus.
Yet, I still have a faint hope that the times will change for Belarus. May be the opposition candidate Milinkevich will get considerable support. May be the Belarusians will dare to go out on the streets and protest the authoritarian regime… There have been examples in recent history – why not Belarus? That is what would make me really happy.
Alas, it will probably be another boring day in the history of Europe’s last dictatorship.
Here you can read about my Impressions of Belarus.
posted by Kristina at 4:22 PM
2 Comments:
Why do you call a perfectly democratic election process result a dictatorship? Was there something non-democractic and non-representative in the last elections? If the people of Belarus choose someone as their representative in the leadership of their country, who are we to judge? Last time I checked, a dictatorship is defined as a 'goverment' who took over leadership without any form of democratic elections, most of the times using the power of the military, which is hardly the case in Belarus right now. I also recently saw that the EU has actually banned the Belarus President from travelling into EU. Here, I would like to note that in fact EU representatives were elected by 30% of the european citizens who voted, which judge someone who was elected in a country where 93% of the population voted and got a percentage of approximately 82%! Anyone may freely disagree with his politics, but is oblidged to show respect to the will of the Belarus people at least! In Greece, we have an elected government with the 45% of the votes (not even half) with 75% of the population voting. Democarcy is all about deep respect of what over half of the population want.
Marios-dear! Elections do not equate with democracy, neither do the high turnouts or unbelievable results. In the USSR, election turnouts were well above 90% and vote counts sometimes gave above 100% victory. May sound ironic/idiotic, but it is true. Nobody however, in the right state of mind, would have called the USSR a democratic country.
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