Belarus Opposition Hopes to Learn From Yugoslavia in Ousting Dictator

President Alexander G. Lukashenko has earned many nicknames since he came to power six years ago. But since Sloboban Milosevic was forced to resign as president of Yugoslavia this month, the Belarussian strongman has gained a new one: “Europe’s Last Dictator.”

Since 1994, by hook and by crook, Lukashenko has concentrated power in his own hands and hobbled his opponents, many of them disillusioned former aides and allies.

In the last 18 months, some of those former aides and opponents have disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances in this former Soviet republic, part of what observers call a campaign of intimidation by Lukashenko.

The disappearances are a major reason that the U.S. government and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have announced that they won’t recognize the results of parliamentary elections scheduled for today.

Meanwhile, Belarussian opposition leaders--those who haven’t disappeared--are studying Yugoslavia’s revolution in the hopes of fomenting their own. Demonstrators at anti-election protests around the country, including one here Saturday, have been carrying signs reading: “Today--Milosevic. Tomorrow--Lukashenko.”

The political situation these days in Belarus, a splotch of flatland between Russia and Poland, bears some important similarities to Yugoslavia. In particular, Belarus is entering a critical election cycle, starting with today’s elections, that opponents and Western observers expect will be marred by irregularities and vote-rigging.

“The falsifications will be on a scale we have never seen before,” predicted Svetlana Bestuzheva, an opposition worker preparing to monitor the polls. “It is now an official policy of the state, and it will be more brutal than ever before.”

Lukashenko loyalists insist that the elections will take place strictly within Belarussian laws, and they condemn the West’s advance decision not to recognize them.

“It’s not right to take a decision like that even before the elections take place,” said Lidiya Yermoshina, chairwoman of Belarus’ Central Election Commission. “It’s going to put pressure on voters and those who work at the polls. It’s an unforgivable decision by the West.”

For his part, Lukashenko says he isn’t worried.

“A lot of people point their fingers at Yugoslavia and say, ‘We want a second Yugoslavia in Belarus,’ ” Lukashenko said during a visit to a collective farm. “I tell you, there will be no Yugoslavia in Belarus. We will not permit anyone to bring instability to our country. . . . The government has more than enough strength to ensure a peaceful ballot.”

Today’s elections are the first of two expected rounds of balloting for Belarus’ toothless parliament. But the real battle will come during next spring’s presidential election, when Lukashenko has pledged to give his 10 million countrymen the right to vote him out of power.

Considering his ever-lower ratings, many fear that he won’t let it be a fair fight.

“What Serbia’s opposition achieved is an important lesson for us,” said Ventsuk Vechorka, leader of the Belarussian Popular Front, the country’s main opposition group. “We are studying this very carefully.”

The most important lesson, they all say, is that the opposition--a fractured collection of nationalists, democrats, Communists and former government officials--has to find a way to overcome deep differences and coalesce behind a single candidate.

That might not be easy. In addition to ideological differences, Belarus’ opposition is split over whether to boycott today’s vote.

The issue goes back to 1996, when Lukashenko held a national referendum--which Western monitors said was rigged--that extended his term of office, disbanded the parliament and established a new legislative body with nearly no powers.

“All it is is a pseudo-parliamentary organ,” Vechorka said. “It can’t even confirm ministerial appointments. Any presidential decree has more power than any act of parliament. Taking part in these elections would be recognizing the parliament and recognizing the elections as legitimate.”

But Nikolai Statkevich, the leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party, argued that some elections are better than no elections.

“These are very dishonest elections,” Statkevich said. “But if no one takes part even in dishonest elections, then we have no hope of ever getting a real parliament, and the next elections will be even worse.”

Statkevich has already paid heavily for his decision. Half of the candidates he sponsored were scratched from the ballot for technical reasons, such as a second person filling in the date next to a signature on a collection form--an example Yermoshina provided herself.

“Our election law is very particular,” she said unapologetically.

In addition, two armed men broke into the Social Democratic Party offices last month. Besides stealing a computer and cash totaling about $9,000, they confiscated a secret list of party candidates running as independents, which Statkevich said probably will be used to harass those candidates.

But Statkevich stands by his decision to take part in the elections. He noted that he and his candidates have had a chance to hold campaign rallies and work with voters--something they couldn’t have done if they were to boycott the ballot. Moreover, without opposition candidates for the government to harass, no one in the West would have paid attention.

But Vechorka said the large number of disqualified Social Democrat candidates only demonstrates that the entire event is a “farce.”

“What we need more than anything else is political support, recognition from other countries that the elections are illegitimate,” he said.

The opposition’s divisions have eroded its support. Although opinion polls indicate that Lukashenko’s popularity, once overwhelming, is now only around 38%, opposition forces aren’t making up the difference--no party gets more than 3% support.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s thanks to our divided opposition that we still have Lukashenko,” groused Vladimir Zhuravlyov, a computer programmer moonlighting as a cab driver.

But the biggest obstacle facing both the government and the opposition is not political but apolitical--the vast majority of the Belarussian population who are apathetic about such matters.

In order for the first-round election results to be valid, voter turnout must be higher than 50%. Despite generally high turnout in post-Soviet countries, polls indicate that the number of Belarussian voters planning to take part is hovering around the minimum. This means that in order to win, each side needs to find a way to rouse the electorate, especially those outside Minsk, the capital.

That might not be easy, as a visit to the Gaina collective farm 25 miles outside Minsk demonstrated.

The farm, whose entrance is marked by a grandiose World War II-era monument, is home to 120 workers and more than 600 pensioners. The average salary for the workers ranges from $3 to $5 a month. When it’s harvest time, those who work 10-hour overtime shifts can boost their earnings--the director says to $40 a month, but the workers say it’s more like $20.

That’s if wages are paid at all. This summer, the farm fell four months behind.

“Now they’ve paid us up to September,” said 51-year-old Lyona Puntus. “It’s probably because of the election.”

For the most part, people have to eat what they grow in their backyards, Puntus said. In the village store, a $5 monthly salary doesn’t go far: sausage costs $3 a kilo, vodka costs $1.50 a bottle, a loaf of bread about 23 cents.

Puntus said he hadn’t decided whether he’d bother to vote today, complaining that he knew nothing about any of the 11 candidates running in his district.

But despite his hardships, he doesn’t blame Lukashenko.

“I’m satisfied with him,” he said. “I think he’s a good person. I like his personality. I don’t think anyone else could do any better.”

Zinaida Gonchar felt differently. Her husband, Viktor, is one of the disappeared. On Sept. 16, 1999, he went to the sauna with a local businessman and never came home. That afternoon, Lukashenko had made a virulent speech denouncing “opposition scum.”

“I said to Viktor, ‘It sounds like he is talking about you,’ ” Gonchar recalled. At least three former Lukashenko aides who had joined the opposition had already disappeared. “We should have seen it coming,” she said.

Viktor Gonchar helped Lukashenko win election in 1994, campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, and he became a deputy prime minister and election committee chairman. But Gonchar split with the president two years later after Lukashenko began working instead to rebuild a Soviet-style system and was preparing the controversial referendum. The summer before he disappeared, Gonchar organized a “shadow” election at the time when Lukashenko should have stood for election under the previous constitution.

Zinaida Gonchar said she has “no doubt at all that Lukashenko himself is responsible” for her husband’s disappearance. And she refused to contemplate the possibility that he is dead, expressing confidence that he will return home someday.

“Lukashenko is not eternal,” she said. “Sooner or later, all this will have to end.”