Lukashenko gets popular vote
U.S. attempt to buy Belarus election fails
By John Catalinotto
One would think that after the fiasco of the year 2000 U.S.
national elections, no one in Washington would have the nerve
to criticize the electoral process in other countries.
That election brought out the systematic exclusion of
African American voters as part of a racist heritage. It
underlined the obstacles put in the way of immigrants who are
new citizens and the general undercounting of voters from
poorer communities.
It wasn't only "uncounted chads" and poorly aligned ballots.
It showed how a right-wing Supreme Court majority and an
entrenched political machine in Florida--run by George W.
Bush's brother--can choose who wins. Bush didnn't come near to
getting a majority of the popular vote, but now he's
president.
On top of all this, both major party candidates were white
men from wealthy capitalist families whose entire career was
built serving powerful corporate and military interests.
But to assume that would keep Washington quiet about other
elections underestimates the arrogance in the White House that
remains whether a Democrat or Republican is in office.
On Sept. 9, over 75 percent of the voters in Belarus, a
former republic of the USSR and now a country of 10.5 million
people located between Russia and Poland, chose to reelect
President Alexander Lukashenko for a five-year term.
A Sept. 10 Associated Press article reported that the White
House disapproved of Lukashenko's election. "The Bush
administration has also said Lukashenko stacked the electoral
commission with loyal people and that he `regularly obstructs
and impedes' the electoral process."
The Bush administration understands the importance of having
"loyal people" on an election commission--like the Florida
loyalists and the reactionaries on the Supreme Court.
Why the U.S. opposes Lukashenko
But there is more to Bush's criticism than just arrogance,
and more than displeasure with Belarus's electoral process. As
the AP article went on to report, "Lukashenko's policies have
drawn sharp criticism from the United States."
Thought they compete with one another, Washington and its
allies in Western Europe have a common aim regarding those
countries that were once part of the socialist camp led by the
USSR. They want to divide them into ever-smaller pieces and
turn the pieces into neocolonies of the West.
They want to open them up to globalization, that is, to
unfettered penetration by the giant banks and corporations
based in the West.
The U.S., Britain, Germany, France and others have already
succeeded in turning much of the Balkans peninsula into a NATO
protectorate. When, under Slobodan Milosevic's presidency,
Yugoslavia resisted, they bombed the country and subverted the
elections there to remove this obstacle.
They see in Lukashenko a similar obstacle to globalization,
that is, to open imperialist penetration. As the AP article
reported, "At home, Lukashenko is popular for his defiance of
the West and for his efforts to hold together the social safety
net and stem the economic turmoil that accompanied the 1991
Soviet collapse."
The Aug. 18 New York Times reported how U.S. agencies were
aiding "opposition groups" in Belarus, much as they did the
Otpor group in Yugoslavia. The agencies sent funds and advisers
to help destabilize the Lukashenko government and mobilize
those who oppose him.
However, Lukashenko closed the doors to U.S.-European
intervention in the Belarus elections by confiscating the
computers, literature, and other equipment that Washington and
Berlin donated to the opposition. That's what the Bush gang
means by "impeding the electoral process."
Election monitors from imperialist Western Europe--from the
Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE)--joined the U.S. criticism of the Belarus election. But
independent European observers said there were no election
irregularities.
Former German Admiral Elmar Schmaeh ling, one of these
observers, said that "for three years the OSCE has hung onto
independent Belarus like a louse in fur." (Junge Welt, Sept.
11) The former admiral was himself once in German naval
intelligence. He is currently a leader of the European Peace
Forum.
Showing the size of this operation in Belarus, Schmaehling
said an OSCE group led by former chief of West German espionage
Hans-Georg Wieck had "kept several hundred colleagues busy with
one central task-support of the so-called democratic forces in
the opposition and the regime."
Wieck had written in the Belgian daily La Libre Belgique on
Aug. 31 that OSCE support had succeeded in joining the seven
most important opposition parties behind the main opposition
candidate to Luka shenko. But this time it didn't work.
This article is copyright under a Creative
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