Sunday Telegraf: Belarus election diary: “free and fair” elections

Mr Lukashenko, "Europe's last dictator", has organized new elections which he promises will be “free and fair”.

DAY ONE — The world’s most modest autocrat?

For a country described by Washington as one of the world’s “last outposts of tyranny”, Belarus is disappointing low on dictator memorabilia. I’m an avid collector of such stuff, having picked up Saddam Hussein watches in Iraq, Ayatollah Khomeini posters in Iran, and a lapel badge of the late Slobodan Milosevic when I covered his funeral in Serbia. Yet my hopes of expanding my horde with a bit of merchandise of President Alexander Lukashenko merchandise are dashed as soon as I arrive.

Belarus’s capital, Minsk, does feel somewhat timewarped with its Soviet-era hammer and sickles and its huge sprawls of grey housing blocks, but there are no statues, montages or posters of Mr Lukashenko anywhere. He hasn’t even named the airport after him, nor is he on the fistful of Belarussian roubles that I pick up in the bureau de change at arrivals. Can this really be “Europe’s last dictator”, as everyone says?

The answer, as ever, depends on who you ask, although it has to be said that despite any obvious outward signs of megalomania, Mr Lukashenko’s CV is pretty colourful. He was elected to power in 1994 after a career running a poultry farm, and according to his critics, has run the country in much the same fashion — keeping Belarus’s population basically safe and well-fed through a combination of tough policing and a state-subsidised industry, but firmly clipping the wings of anyone who challenges him.

His 14 years in office has seen him steadily tighten his grip, stripping parliament of most of its powers, chucking political enemies in jail, acquiring the right to remain as president for life, and branding pro-democracy demonstrators as Western-backed “terrorists”. Nor does his lack of desire to have his mug displayed everywhere necessarily hide a complete lack of ego as Belarus’s Bat’ka, or father. Cameramen have reportedly been sacked after showing his bald patch on TV, and until recently, there was even an official ban on cracking jokes about him.

True, his supporters – and there are many of them — claim his tough guy act has avoided the chaos, economic meltdown and near anarchy that neighbouring Russia endured during the 1990s. But others say that excuse has long worn thin – and nor, they add, does it justify some of his more sinister alleged excesses over the years, such as selling arms to the likes of Libya, Iran and Saddam-era Iraq, and becoming pally with many of the rest of international bad boys’ club, such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Syria’s Bashir Assad. In fact, as small, relatively tinpot dictators go, he has pushed it about as far as one can go without attracting an invasion force or a nuclear bomb threat from Washington. The West has has so far contented itself with slapping personalised sanctions on him and describing Belarus as a regime “with no place in Europe”.

So is Mr Lukashenko, who once declared that there would be “no pink, orange or even banana revolution in Belarus”, really turning over a new leaf?

Officially, the answer is yes. He has organized new elections which he promises will be “free and fair”, and invited in foreign monitors and newspapers such as the Telegraph to watch for themselves. There’s even a British political spindoctor at his side, Lord Bell, who is thought to be behind the president’s response when asked by the Financial Times recently whether it might be time to step down. Mr Lukashenko jauntily replied that the “English Queen” had been in power longer than he had.

Belarus election diary: campaign to boycott the elections
The opposition leader’s latest stint in jail was because of his involvement in a campaign to boycott the current elections

DAY TWO — meeting the opposition

Despite Mr Bell’s best efforts, one person who sprinkles a fat bushel of salt on anything that Mr Lukashenko utters is Aliaksandr Atroshchankau, a 27-year-old graduate who is the co-ordinator for “European Belarus”, a campaign urging closer links with the European Union.

In Britain, that would scarcely count as subversive activity, but here in Belarus it has been enough to attract the attention of the KGB and police. Aliaksandr was also among the coalition of students and pro-Western types who in 2006 attempted a variant of the Orange Revolution in neighbouring Ukraine, wearing denims to their rallies rather than Orange garments. If the “Denim Revolution” doesn’t ring a bell, that’s because it was snuffed out before it ever got going: Mr Lukashenko sent in police and troops to break up the crowds, and many ringleaders were arrested.

We meet Aliaksandr in the lobby of my hotel, where he tells me about the various times he has spent in jail (the most recent being in June, which meant, ironically for a pro-European, that he missed watching the entire European Cup). The longest he has ever spent is a fortnight, which is not much compared with some of Mr Lukashenko’s opponents, yet it still sounds pretty horrible, despite the claims of some supporters of the regime that opposition activists get themselves jailed as a badge of honour.

“They chuck you in a jail for ‘administrative detainees’, where there are usually about 20 people in a tiny room with hardly any space to move around,” he says.

“You got no exercise, not even for 10 minutes a day, and you’re not allowed any visits or food from relatives, and the food gives you diarrhoea.”

Even a fortnight inside, he adds, leaves you weak and “half-brain dead”.

“You find your mind slowing down to the point where you can’t even do half a crossword puzzle.”

The reason for Mr Atroshchankau’s latest stint in jail was his involvement in a campaign to boycott the current elections, which he claims are a sham to simply make Mr Lukashenko look good. Friends of his have been secretly printing and flyposting eyecatching “boycott” posters across town, which feature images borrowed from Banksy, the London-based urban graffiti artist.

It’s fashionable in Britain to consider Banksy as a bit of a sell-out these days, given the price his works fetch at auction. Here, though, he’s still seen as a genuinely anti-establishment figure — especially given that anyone caught copying him is likely to get much more than a friendly warning from their local policeman.