Belarus Presidential Election Drama Llama

[lpetrich]

Posting this here because this is what the US might be in for this November.

Belarus election: Protests as preliminary results give President Lukashenko an overwhelming victory - CNN

Belarus' main opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, has rejected preliminary election results giving the country's longtime President, Alexander Lukashenko, a landslide election victory with 80% of the vote. "I believe my own eyes, the majority was for us," Tikhanovskaya said in a news conference on Monday, according to multiple local media reports. "We do not recognize the election results. We have seen real protocols. We urge those who believe that their voice was stolen not to remain silent."

• Alexander Lukashenko: 80.23%
• Svetlana Tikhanovskaya: 9.9%

Critics have voiced concerns about widespread ballot stuffing and falsifications. Independent monitoring group "Honest people" said at Tikhanovskaya's press conference that, according to their data, she won in at least 80 polling stations across Belarus. Tikhanovskaya, 37, added that she was ready to meet Lukashenko to discuss bringing "peaceful change of power." Her campaign has said it is "ready for long-term protests" and that it will demand a recount.

...
Tikhanovskaya, a former English tutor, became an unexpected rival to Lukashenko, and the face of the opposition after taking over from her husband, Sergey Tikhanovskiy, a popular YouTube blogger and former candidate who has been jailed since May. Her campaign rallies saw significant turnouts even in small Belarusian towns not known for their protest activity. About 63,000 people attended the largest event in Minsk in July -- making it the biggest demonstration in the past decade.

...
The night before the election, Tikhanovskaya's campaign said she had fled her apartment and gone into hiding due to safety concerns after police detained several of its senior staffers. Critics called the move an attempt to intimidate the opposition ahead of the crucial vote. Her adviser, Veronika Tsepkalo, fled Belarus for Moscow for safety reasons, the campaign said on Sunday.

...
Yet internet access has been largely restricted, and was completely shut down in central Minsk, according to local reports. NetBlocks, an NGO that tracks internet shutdowns worldwide, said in a tweet late Sunday, "Multiple internet providers in #Belarus have lost routing as polling stations start to close from 8:00 p.m; geolocated network data confirm the new disruption has nation-scale impact further limiting visibility of events."

...
Most independent observers were barred from monitoring the election. Dozens of independent observers were detained on Saturday and early Sunday, according to the "Honest people" and "Right to choose" initiatives.

...
The foreign ministries of France, Germany and Poland said they would be monitoring the elections with "great concern" due to "worrying reports of electoral irregularities during early voting." The three countries said the European Council was also not allowed to oversee the electoral process.

 

[lpetrich]

Tadeusz Giczan on Twitter: "Seems like too many people voted for Tikhanovskaya already. The number of ballots doesn't add up because of early vote rigging. Police had to bring a ladder and commission members are climbing out of polling station with full bags https://t.co/NjzKcANUop" / Twitter - with some video of that

Though most of the response tweets were also in English, several were in Russian, a few in French, and one in Italian. None in Belarusian.

I got responses explaining it as many Belarusians also speak Russian, often as their first language, and that Russian is much more widely spoken than Belarusian.

Belarus election: Lukashenko's claim of landslide victory sparks widespread protests | World news | The Guardian

Clashes broke out in cities across Belarus on Sunday evening as riot police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, teargas and water cannon to quash protests against the results of the contested presidential election.

...
Large protests broke out soon after the polls closed in Minsk, where a crowd of thousands gathered in the centre of the capital. A reporter for the Guardian saw police use water cannon against protesters and was fired on by rubber bullets. Opponents of Lukashenko chanted, “Leave!” Police made dozens of arrests. In one video, an army truck appeared to run into a protester.

On Monday morning Reuters reported that at least one person was killed after being knocked over by a police prisoner van and dozens were injured. Fighting was also reported in approximately 20 other cities, including Gomel and Vitebsk. In several smaller cities, however, riot police were reported to have refused to engage protesters or retreated.

Video appears to show Belarus official climbing down ladder with bag thought to contain voting slips | Global | The Guardian
Video appears to show Belarus official climbing down ladder with bag thought to contain voting slips - YouTube

 

[Elixir]

Hopefully the fact that in the US it's more like 50 different elections will make a difference.
If they're physically or electronically "stuffing" Trump ballots or something on that level, at least one or two will get probably caught, especially given Republicans' ineptitude and cavalier attitude toward cheating.

 

[James Brown]

If an election is close, then it's "The other side must have cheated to put themselves just over the top."

If an election is one-sided, then it's "The other side must have cheated to pull off such a lopsided victory."

I wonder what the sweet spot for an uncontested election is?

 

[SLD]

Yeah, I was reading articles about this earlier and thinking this will be us in November. We’re turning into Belarus.

 

[ZiprHead]

Yeah, I was reading articles about this earlier and thinking this will be us in November. We’re turning into Belarus.

Rachel Maddow led off her program with it tonight.

 

[SLD]

Yeah, I was reading articles about this earlier and thinking this will be us in November. We’re turning into Belarus.

Rachel Maddow led off her program with it tonight.

Missed it. Should have watched.

 

[Patooka]

If an election is close, then it's "The other side must have cheated to put themselves just over the top."

If an election is one-sided, then it's "The other side must have cheated to pull off such a lopsided victory."

I wonder what the sweet spot for an uncontested election is?

"Aaron Sorkin is going to make a fucking movie about this in five years time".

 

[lpetrich]

Opposition candidate leaves Belarus, urges end to protests

The top opposition candidate in Belarus’ presidential vote, who initially refused to concede her defeat amid a massive police crackdown on anti-government protesters, said Tuesday she has left for Lithuania and called on her supporters to end demonstrations.

Looking haggard and distressed, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a former teacher and political novice, apologized to her supporters in a video statement and said it was her own choice to leave the country.

“It was a very hard decision to make,” she said. “I know that many of you will understand me, many others will condemn me and some will even hate me. But God forbid you ever face the choice that I faced.”

...
Tsikhanouskaya, a 37-year-old former English teacher without any prior political experience, entered the race after her husband, an opposition blogger who had hoped to run for president, was arrested in May. She has managed to unite fractured opposition groups and draw tens of thousands to her campaign rallies — the largest opposition demonstrations in Belarus since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the video statement posted on her Facebook, Tsikhanouskaya thanked her supporters for backing her candidacy, but added that “the people of Belarus have made their choice.”

“Belarusians, I’m urging you to show common sense and respect for the law,” she said, reading a text without raising her eyes from the paper. “I don’t want blood and violence. I’m asking you not to confront the police and not take to squares to put your lives in danger. Take care of yourselves and your relatives.”

...
We don’t know what kind of pressure she was subjected to and how they tried to break her,” Kovalkova said. “She couldn’t have said it on her own. She was reading a prepared text.”

She said that Tsikhanouskaya left the country with her campaign chief, Maria Moroz, who had been detained over the weekend. Several other campaign aides have remained in custody.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said the videos posted by Tsikhanouskaya had been recorded in Belarus before her journey to Vilnius.

 Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya

• Belarusian: Sviatlana Hyeorhiyeuna Tsikhanouskaya - Святла́на Гео́ргіеўна Ціхано́ўская
• Russian: Svetlana Georgiyevna Tikhanovskaya - Светла́на Гео́ргиевна Тихано́вская

Prior to becoming a presidential candidate, Tsikhanouskaya was an English teacher[19][20] and interpreter.[21] She spent many summers in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, as part of a Chernobyl children's programme.[22] She is married to arrested YouTuber, blogger, and activist Siarhei Tsikhanouski.[20] The two have a son and a daughter.[19]

After the arrest of her husband on 29 May, Tsikhanouskaya announced her intention to run in his place. She was registered as a candidate on 14 July 2020 as an Independent.[23] After her registration as a candidate, she was endorsed by the campaigns of Valery Tsepkalo and Viktar Babaryka, two prominent opposition politicians who were barred from registering, with one being arrested and the other fleeing the country. A photo of Tsikhanouskaya with Maria Kolesnikova, Babaryka's campaign chief, and Veronika Tsepkalo, the wife of Valery Tsepkalo, has become a symbol of her campaign.[24]

The night before the election, police detained senior staffers from Tsikhanouskaya's campaign and she was forced to go into hiding in Minsk, before reemerging on election day at an appearance at a polling station.[25]

After the elections, she fled to Lithuania in fear of imprisonment.[26]

 

[lpetrich]

Who is the woman challenging Belarusian President Lukashenko? | Belarus | Al Jazeera

Tikhanovskaya has been honest about her lack of experience in politics and has said she had made the decision to join the presidential race spontaneously. It followed the arrest of her husband, Sergei Tikhanovsky, a popular Youtube blogger who had tried to register as a candidate.

Tikhanovskaya had hoped this would draw attention to his case and help get him released, but had not really expected the authorities would actually allow her to run.

What happened next surprised Tikhanovskaya herself, the Belarusian authorities and even longtime observers of Belarusian politics.

Within days of her registration, Tikhanovskaya managed to gather massive crowds at her rallies across the country.

In Minsk, an estimated 63,000 people showed up to her campaign event on July 30. Thousands also attended her rallies in smaller provincial towns, where traditional Belarusian opposition has had a hard time establishing a foothold in the past.

There is a revolution in Belarus. This is important for us in the United States.

... Lukashenko is humongously unpopular (how exactly unpopular is difficult to quantify — there are next to zero credible pollsters in the country, but his approval is somewhere between 30% and 3% — hence the nickname “Sasha 3%”). An additional recent decline of Lukashenko’s popularity may be linked to his absolute COVID-19 denial — he’s worse than Brazil’s Bolsonaro.

The run-up to the election was quite scandalous, with several candidates, as mentioned above, arrested, prevented from registering, and so on. Here is a decent summary, with a now-viral photo of the three wives of arrested male candidates pledging to combine their efforts.

Anyway, the polls were open for several days before the official election date, reports of irregularities started rolling in almost immediately, on August 9, there were huge crowds of people outside polling places who were not even let inside to vote… and in a few hours, Lukashenko was declared the winner supposedly with 80+ percent of the votes, with about 9% for Tikhanovskaya. A little problem with this official number is that multiple election protocols were published online, showing Tikhanovskaya’s blowout defeat of Lukashenko.

 

[barbos]

1. If you look at the data you will see that COVID-19 situation in Belarus is actually pretty good, much better than in Russia and much much better than in Brasil.
2. Such a low 3% rating for Lukashenko is BS.

He most certainly would have won, but he was paranoid and arrested all his opponents. Now we can't be sure of anything.

By the way, crime rate in Belarus is very low, there is simply no organized crime.

 

[KeepTalking]

1. If you look at the data you will see that COVID-19 situation in Belarus is actually pretty good, much better than in Russia and much much better than in Brasil.

Who controls the data coming out of Belarus?

2. Such a low 3% rating for Lukashenko is BS.

How about 30%? That was the other end of the range.

By the way, crime rate in Belarus is very low

That is often the case with authoritarian governments.

 

[barbos]

KeepTalking, you are king of negative.

 

[KeepTalking]

KeepTalking, you are king of negative.

I asked two questions of you that given your apparent expertise on Belarus, you should be able to answer quite easily.

I then noted that crime rates are often quite low when authoritarian governments are in charge, at least so long as you do not count the government's crimes against their own people.

If you can't answer the questions, or can't provide any context with regard to the low crime rate and the possibility of authoritarianism that might indicate, then just say so.

 

[lpetrich]

Thousands arrested as protesters call Belarusian election rigged - YouTube
Russia says military help available for Belarus; huge protest held in Minsk - Reuters

The protest in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, attracted around 200,000 people, a Reuters reporter estimated. At least two protesters have died and thousands have been detained in demonstrations since last Sunday’s vote.

People carried red and white flags and chanted “Lukashenko step down” and “We won’t forget or forgive.”

Opponents of Lukashenko, in power for 26 years, say the vote was rigged to disguise the fact that he has lost public support. He denies losing, citing official results that gave him just over 80% of the vote.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has criticized Lukashenko's regime, though not Trump.

Belarus: Mass protest eclipses defiant Belarus leader's rally - BBC News

The "March for Freedom" in the centre of the capital comes amid growing anger over alleged poll-rigging and police violence at subsequent protests.

Meanwhile, in an address to a smaller crowd of several thousand, Mr Lukashenko blasted opponents as "rats".

He called on supporters to defend their country and independence.

The rival rallies were taking place after Russia agreed to offer security assistance in the case of external military threats to Belarus. It emerged that Mr Lukashenko had twice spoken to President Vladimir Putin over the weekend.

...
EU foreign ministers agreed on Friday to prepare new sanctions against Belarusian officials responsible for "violence, repression and the falsification of election results". The US has also condemned the election as "not free and fair".

The prime ministers of three Baltic republics - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - later "expressed deep concern at the violent crackdown... and the political repression of the opposition by the authorities".

Lithuania and Latvia have previously said they are prepared to mediate in Belarus, provided the authorities stopped violence against protesters and formed a national council with members of civil society. They warned that the alternative was sanctions.

The leaders said the presidential election was "neither free nor fair" and called for a "transparent" vote "with the participation of international observers".

Ms Tikhanovskaya left for Lithuania following the election after she publicly denounced the results. She had sent her children to Lithuania for safety before the vote.

Some 6,700 people were arrested in the wake of the election, and many have spoken of torture at the hands of the security services.

 

[lpetrich]

Belarus elections: Shocked by violence, people lose their fear - BBC News

Seeing police brutality up close has shocked Belarusians, first during the street clashes with protesters and then as accounts spread of cruelty towards those taken to detention centres.

...
The protests are unprecedented in their scale as people in dozens of cities, towns and even villages rise up and call for the main opposition figure, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, to be recognised as the winner of Sunday's presidential election.

I watched as young men and women ran for safety past my windows, taking a break from the clashes before returning to face the police.

...
Police have started going around the courtyards outside blocks of flats, grabbing anyone they can lay their hands on, including teenagers who were not even protesting. And this has angered people further.

Belarusians have shouted from their balconies, swearing and screaming at police to go away. Police have responded by firing rubber bullets at the balconies.

There were earlier protests and earlier crackdowns, in 2006 and 2010, but smaller in scale.

But the level of brutality is shocking and new. Protesters and often passers-by have been targeted by people clad in black, wearing balaclavas and with no insignia or uniform. This happened to a BBC team too.

...
But there is a fearlessness too among the largely young protesters. These are mainly ordinary Belarusians, not the hardened opposition supporters we have seen in previous protests, and they have no clear leader.

The old opposition has gone. Some who stood against the president or campaigned for democracy are behind bars, others have fled into exile.

So far the new generation of protesters have no clear demands or political programme, only slogans: "Go away! Long live Belarus! Release the prisoners!"

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya herself was not an opposition leader but a stay-at-home mother whose straightforward approach symbolised people's desire for change. But she too has gone.

I look at what's happening in Belarus and I think: is this what will happen here in the US?

 

[Elixir]

Uncle Vlad will certainly have his hand in the electronic voting machines. Mail in ballots are more difficult for him to fuck with.
Ergo, Trump's panic over actual ballots...

 

[barbos]

Just heard an anecdote.
One guy walks on the street, policemen stop him and start dragging him into their vehicle to get to prison.
The guy: "Why?! I voted for Lukashenko!"
The police: "You lying POS, nobody voted for Lukashenko"

 

[TV and credit cards]

Belarus elections: Shocked by violence, people lose their fear - BBC News

Seeing police brutality up close has shocked Belarusians, first during the street clashes with protesters and then as accounts spread of cruelty towards those taken to detention centres.

...
The protests are unprecedented in their scale as people in dozens of cities, towns and even villages rise up and call for the main opposition figure, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, to be recognised as the winner of Sunday's presidential election.

I watched as young men and women ran for safety past my windows, taking a break from the clashes before returning to face the police.

...
Police have started going around the courtyards outside blocks of flats, grabbing anyone they can lay their hands on, including teenagers who were not even protesting. And this has angered people further.

Belarusians have shouted from their balconies, swearing and screaming at police to go away. Police have responded by firing rubber bullets at the balconies.

There were earlier protests and earlier crackdowns, in 2006 and 2010, but smaller in scale.

But the level of brutality is shocking and new. Protesters and often passers-by have been targeted by people clad in black, wearing balaclavas and with no insignia or uniform. This happened to a BBC team too.

...
But there is a fearlessness too among the largely young protesters. These are mainly ordinary Belarusians, not the hardened opposition supporters we have seen in previous protests, and they have no clear leader.

The old opposition has gone. Some who stood against the president or campaigned for democracy are behind bars, others have fled into exile.

So far the new generation of protesters have no clear demands or political programme, only slogans: "Go away! Long live Belarus! Release the prisoners!"

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya herself was not an opposition leader but a stay-at-home mother whose straightforward approach symbolised people's desire for change. But she too has gone.

I look at what's happening in Belarus and I think: is this what will happen here in the US?

As long as we're arguing amongst ourselves instead of presenting a strong unified message, yes.
As long as we sit on our asses and hope the post office delivers our ballots in a timely fashion, yes.
As long as we refuse to boycott, protest, and continue to invest in a stock market that is Trump's last stand, yes.
Then sure, we can expect four more years of Trumpashenko and a continuation down this path we fear.

 

[lpetrich]

Belarusian protesters defy Lukashenko, EU announces sanctions - Reuters

Hundreds of Belarusian protesters gathered in Minsk on Wednesday evening, defying a new order from President Alexander Lukashenko to his police to clear the streets of the capital after a week and a half of rallies against his rule.

Holding an emergency summit on the crisis, the European Union rejected Lukashenko’s re-election in a disputed vote on Aug. 9 and announced financial sanctions against officials the bloc blames for election fraud and the abuse of protesters. “This is about the Belarusian people and their legitimate right to determine the future path of their country,” said the head of the EU’s executive Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

Her comment was echoed by Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden. “The brave citizens of Belarus are showing their voices will not be silenced by terror or torture,” he tweeted, adding that Russia, Belarus’s giant neighbour, should not interfere. “This is not about geopolitics but the right to choose one’s leaders.”