This August, Aliaksandr Lukashenka will seek re-election as president of Belarus for the sixth time in a row. Although the campaign is only starting to take off, it has already proven to be the most interesting in the state’s recent history. Lukashenka is facing genuine resistance to his rule and, it seems, has made several mistakes in dealing with his opponents - bad election timing, counter-productive violence and stirring up another source of tension with Russia. The question is: could these mistakes help bring about a long-awaited democratisation in the country?
Lukashenka has not seen a strong competitor to his rule since winning a democratic election in 1994. Back during the years of post-Soviet collapse, the widely popular and charismatic leader attracted mass support, only later to capture power and claim the title of “last dictator in Europe”. The issue here is that while the state’s autocratic system has hindered electoral competition in Belarus, it is widely believed that Lukashenka would have won previous elections even if votes had been counted fairly. The conventional opposition has long discredited itself in their reluctant struggle against the regime, which usually consisted of promoting populist slogans and underdeveloped strategy.
Previous moments of major resistance to Lukashenka’s regime came in 2006 and 2010, when thousands of protesters took to streets with calls for democratic change. Those protests were met with a crackdown and detention of both civil participants and presidential candidates. (Indeed, popular candidates in Belarus have a habit of ending up in prison or exile, or both.) After rather vibrant campaigns in 2006 and 2010, Belarus saw an insipid election in 2015 - civil society was not willing to support “technical” opposition candidates, and hence remained unengaged. This year was supposed to be the same but for a last minute twist.
