The 18th Brumaire of A. Lukashenko
* Belarus
The main opposition to Belarus'
increasingly dictatorial regime comes from the country's fragile trade unions.
Fifty thousand people took part in a trade union-organised demonstration in Minsk on 17 October' The next day, representatives of opposition organisations and a number of well-known intellectuals, adopted an appeal to support legality and the movement to remove President Lukashenko from office.
The next day, in a manipulated "Popular Assembly" only eleven of the 5,000 "deputies" opposed Lukashenko. A referendum was called, to confirm an increase in presidential powers.
On November 4th, the Constitutional Court ruled that this referendum would have only an "advisory character". Two days later, Lukashenko issued a decree declaring the referendum legally binding, stating that the court's ruling went against the "public will". On November 9, he fired the president of the Central Electoral Commission who said he would not validate its results. This was followed by the resignations of the prime minister and the minister of labour.
On November 13, Lukashenko flew to Moscow, to seek support in the (essentially powerless) Russian Parliament. He stressed his desire for speedy unification of the "two Slav neighbours" evoked Soviet honour, Orthodox spirituality and the strategic threat posed by the West. He was warmly greeted by many Communist deputies and supporters of Vladimir Zhirinovsky.2 It was a speech calculated to appeal to Russian nationalists, who like Lukashenko for his pro-Russia, anti-NATO stance.
According to Lukashenko, 84% of eligible voters participated in the reterendum, with 70.5% approving his amendments. The opposition alleged major electoral fraud and illegality. Among other things, the government encouraged early voting, before the draft constitution had even been published; the government itself printed the ballots, and their number is not known; funding for the referendum came from unknown sources, not the Central Electoral Commission; and, finally, the government controls the media.
Lukashenko then set up a new parliament with 110 of the deputies who acknowledged the official results. Several admitted that they had succumbed to the threat of dismissal of family members from their jobs. The new body voted to dissolve the Supreme Soviet. Five of the eleven members of the Constitutional Court resigned "for health reasons" So did the prosecutor-general.
Elections to a new upper house of the legislature took place on December 28. These deputies are elected by local soviets, but all candidates needed prior 12 International Viewpoint approval by Lukashenko. In any case, the new constitution reduced the Belarus parliament to an essentially advisory body, as in Russia.
The basic criteria of Lukashenko's new appointments has been loyalty to himself. The speaker of the new parliament is A. Malofeev, a former member of the Soviet Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. According to the head of the Autoworkers' Union, there has been "a convergence of a presidential coup with the come-back of the die-hard Stalinists
The active opposition remains a rather strange coalition of trade unionists, democratic Communists social democrats, and liberal (pro-Western) nationalists. So far, it has kept a low profile. Fifty to sixty deputies of the old Supreme Soviet who refuse to recognise the new regime continue to meet periodically. A small rally took place in Minsk on December 8, after which the head of the Socia Democratic Union was arrested along with several other people and sentenced to fifteen days for "participating in the organisation of an unauthorised rallYine opperimens. Ported by the
Western governments. This contrasts with the same governments' approval of Russian President Boris Yeltsin's coup in October 1993, which shed much blood. Lukashenko's presidential coup, at east, has been relatively bloodless.
The difference, of course, is that Yeltsin supports shock therapy and a policy of de tacto subordination of Russia to the G-7 on major questions, whereas Lukashenko, so far at least, rejects neo-liberal "restructuring" supports integration of Belarus with Russia, and lends international support to Russia's half-hearted attempts to resist NATO expansion into eastern
The absence of any major challenge to Lukashenko so far is partly explained by his timely payment of wages. In addition, Lukashenko has taken a relatively soft line. He has concluded a general collective agreement with the Belarussian Federation of Trade Unions that promises some concessions though it is unlikely he will actually carry them out. This "social peace" will not last: the economic situation will inevitably continue to deteriorate, feeding protest. In particular, the coming sectorial negotiations with the Autoworkers' Union are likely to lead to renewed open confrontation. * David Mandel 1. United Nations Day for the Struggle Against Poverty. 2. Yavlinsky's liberals (relatively more independent vis-a-vis the Russian government than the liberals of the "party of power") walked out.
Vladimir Igor'evich Shimanovich* On March 15 1994, after two and a hair years of discussion, the Belarus Suprem Soviet adopted a new constitution, creating a presidential republic. Previously, political power was divided between the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Soviet and the judiciary. Though, to be honest, an independent judiciary did not exist (and still does not). 1994. The Federation of Trade Unions supported V. Kebych, then Chairman of the Council of Ministers. But our union's position was, and still is, that Belarus does not need a presidency. In our opinion, history shows a tendency for presidencies to lead to usurpation of power. We support a parliamentary republic.
Besides Kebych, there were three other candidates: Shushkevich, speaker of the Supreme Soviet, Novikov, head of the Communist Party, and Aleksandr Lukashenko, director of a state farm and deputy to the Supreme Soviet, where he presided over the Commission for the Struggle against Corruption. Lukashenko was really an unknown quantity. People voted not so much for him as against the outgoing government. Lukashenko had made himself a certain political reputation on the basis of an anti-corruption report, which, however, did not deal with government corruption.
He pledged allegiance to the constitution but soon began to claim that the constitution gave him the powers of a tsar, that he could run the state without any opposition.
His basic electoral promise was to "get A different
Europe?
• Preparations for the Economic and
Monetary Union (EMU) are leading to the dismantling of public services and social security and rising unemployment in every EU member state.
• Negotiations to revise the Maastricht
Treaty are supposed to end with the signing of a new treaty by the heads of government during the June 1997
Amsterdam summit.
• There will be an alternative conference, demonstrations and other ac tivities. We invite you to take part.
Committee for a Different Europe, c/o A
SEED Europe, P.O. Box 92066, 1090 AB
Amsterdam, Holland. E-mail:
ander.europa@aseed.antenna.nl
© (+31) 20/66.82.23.6
the factories going." And they have been "going" ever since. When he was elected, 12% of the enterprises were not functioning; today about forty percent are not working. Meanwhile, the workers are getting paid. When we analysed the situation, we found that the hard currency accounts that were amassed in the Soviet period are slowly being unfrozen, that is, we are consuming the basis for future reconstruction.
Lukashenko also ran on the basis of the quality of his future cabinet, which included well-known legal experts, economists, etc. He advertised it as a team of young, energetic pragmatists. But they all resigned in the first half year, leaving Lukashenko with the officials who had served under Kebych. He has also appointed a series of people with whom he had worked in his native Shklovsk district. The director of a local savings bank became director of the Republic's largest state-owned bank! The head of the President's economic administration, which con-
The threat of dictatorship and the loss of civil rights is real. Belarus has political prisoners and political trials; people have even fled to Russia and Bulgaria asking for political asylum. People are beaten and arrested during demonstrations. Some are held for several months. There have been closed trials.
Belarus
YOU'RE
DEADMEAT
LEBED!
dum on amendments to the constitution. In practice, he is proposing a new constitution.
The President could adopt laws on his own.
His term in office would be extended at least two years to 2001. He could forbid strikes.
He could appoint a third of the deputies to a new upper house of Parliament, as well as all trols all state property, is the former economist of Lukashenko's old state farm. LATVIA Good and bad laws?
Another electoral promise was to guarantee equal rights before the law, freedom of the press, and so forth. It took Lukashenko exactly six months to forget that promise. He began to ignore the law, to distinguish "good" laws, that should be applied, from "bad" ones, that should be ignored.
The Constitutional Court has ruled eighteen of his decrees unconstitutional. For example, he forbade a strike in the Minsk metro in the summer of 1996, fired the strike leaders and dissolved the union. He issued a directive forbidding state enterprises from hiring any of the strikers. Most are still out of work.
Another decree automatically terminated the employment of people reaching pension age. Again the Constitutional Court ruled it illegal, so the President slightly modified it to allow for a further two-year contract, but without automatic right of renewal. That, too, is unconstitutional. Another illegal decree ended elections to local governments. President Lukashenko appoints the entire local executive.
He also appoints all judges, but this is legal, an error in the constitution, which, however, guarantees judicial independence. The constitution provides for the division of powers, but in practice all power is concentrated in the President's hands.
Of the eleven people Lukashenko recommended to sit on the Constitutional Court, ten were confirmed. But as soon as the court knocked down one of his decrees, he declared it a bastion of the opposition and issued an order to all levels of the executive to be guided exclusively by his own decrees.
The President controls the printing presses. As a result, all non-state, free newseither printed illegally or outside the country. He
The single television channel carries only the government s point of view. Neither the Speaker of Parliament, nor party nor trade-union leaders have access to the electronic More Russian than the Russians
Lukashenko has organised a show around relations with Russia. Last March, after he signed an agreement on closer relations with Russia, nationalist forces organised a demonstration, which was violently dispersed. Then the president launched a violent campaign of against the participants.
Teachers are afraid to criticise the government. Lukashenko appoints the deans of the institutions of higher education. He appointed a man who had already been dismissed under the Communists for plagiarism to head the State University, a man that students had hooted out of the classroom for incompetence. But that man is loyal to Lukashenko. Teachers who promote the Belarussian language and culture have been persecuted. Belarussian-language schools are being closed. Lukashenko is more Russophile than Yeltsin and he even stated publicly that he would consider running for President of Russia, were it nor for the fact that he was born in Belarus.
Now Lukashenko has initiated a referenjudges of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Economic Court, all lower judges and a majority of judges of the Constitutional Court. He is creating a fourth branch of government, the presidency that dominates all UKRAINE others. Another amendment would outlaw organisations that "fan social animosity". It is not hard to imagine this being used to shut down trade unions. Labour in the democratic opposition
All more-or-less important parties, unions, social organisations and movements from all sides of the political spectrum have united against the President. Seven parties issued an appeal to the population opposing Lukashenko's dictatorial practices and intentions. They created a Round Table of representatives of twenty parties and social movements, including human rights organisations and "alternative trade unions. It includes liberals, social democrats, the trade-union based Party of Labour, the Communist Party, the Agrarians, the Women's Party (linked to the Federation of Trade Unions), the unions, as well as the Belarussian Popular Front and the "new" trade unions.
These "new" unions are members of the Confederation of Labour, which is close to the liberal-nationalist Belarussian Popular Front, though of late they have been leaning The author is a member of the Praesidium of the Belarussian Auto and Agricultural Machine-Construction Workers' Union and Vice President of the Party of Labour
March 1997 #286 13
* Belarus more to the left. In reality, the Soligorsk Miners' Union is the only one among them that really functions.
As for the Popular Front, it is not opposed so much to relations with Russia as to our unilateral dependence on Russia. From an economic point of view, it would be crazy to demand that we isolate ourselves from Russia, since we lack natural resources and we were essentially one big assembly plant within the former Soviet Union. Besides, we are linked by blood and No one expected to see the signatures of the Communist Party and the Belarussian Popular Front on the same document. But if the CP leadership is in opposition to Lukashenko, the same cannot be said for the rank and file.
The Round Table invited Lukashenko to work out a compromise. The political polarisation is even splitting families. The Round Table is offering a conciliation commission with the participation of all interested parties.
Our union held a big conference of its activists, not just full-timers but also ordinary workers from the shops. The conference expressed its indignation at the actions of the President. Our hostility to the President developed gradually, but the last straw was his refusal to sign an amendment to the Labour Code that would have made payment of wages top priority for enterprises. His decree makes payment of taxes a priority, with wages at the bottom of the list. Last May our union initiated a petition campaign to have the Supreme Soviet review the question. We collected the required 50,000 signatures, and the Supreme Soviet adopted the law we wanted. According to the constitution, the President has ten days to sign the law or to send it back, but he did neither, and so the law is in supposedly force. But the executive authorities are guided exclusively by Lukashenko's decrees.
Polls put popular support for the
President at around 60%. In other words, he could win a "vote-of-confidence" referendum, or potentially go to the people and ask for even greater powers. His support is among the unpoliticised and politically illiterate part of the population. He is a very talented populist speaker. He tells every auditorium exactly what it wants to hear at that particular moment. Despite his demagoguery concerning the rapprochement with Russia, whenever Yeltsin or Chernomyrdyn openly express disapproval of his actions, he emphasises Belarus's sovereignty, its capacity to conduct independent external and economic policies, etc.
He plays on the population's disenchantment with market reform and nostalgia for the economic security of the Soviet system.
These feelings are especially strong in rural areas, small towns, where there are no big plants, among pensioners and war veterans, and among a certain part of the urban working class that longs for a strong leader.
One relatively popular policy has been the reintroduction of Soviet-era textbooks in the schools. More importantly, food prices in Belarus are still relatively low. In Russian cities, shops are stocked mostly with impor ted food. But shops here sell mostly locally produced products, especially milk and meat products. Lukashenko has even promised to force shops to carry a certain percentage of domestic products. Urban workers do not have the Russian problem of wage debt, through it is quite serious in the villages.
Factories are working at 60% of capacity, significantly higher than in Russia. There have been relatively few layoffs so far in the auto sector — mainly because of union resistance but also because the government is not pressuring the administration. Privatisation has basically been suspended.
These policies appeal to a large part of the population with leftist leanings. The IMF and World Bank do not like Lukashenko because he is not applying "shock therapy." But all this "socialism" is demagogic. Sooner or later, the balloon with burst. The social rights of the old system are fast being eroded. In August and September 1995, Lukashenko issued seven decrees that abolished the legal norms governing student stipends, old-age pensions, pensions for invalids and victims of Chernobyl, and a series of other groups. Most factories, like our Tractor Factory, are just piling up goods in their warehouse, since they cannot find buyers. The state is merely printing a lot of money, fuelling inflation.
Most Belarussians live in small towns and villages, where it is easier to control publicly expressed views. In certain cases, the head of the local administration clearly told the collective or state farm chairperson: "If the referendum loses or On the dou can kiss your job good-bye. hand, the majority of trade union members are solidly behind their leadership; an important factor for the opposition.
The students also oppose Lukashenko and have been quite active in demonstrations. In part, they are reacting on a nationalist basis, though not the naked nationalism one can find in the Ukraine.
They have some valid points. Russia ships huge quantities of materials and goods through our territory virtually free. Russian military units stationed here cause tremendous ecological damage. Russia has never returned our share of the foreign currency that was frozen under the Soviet regime, nor have we received the funds that were committed to us by the Soviet or the Chernobyl disaster. We have had t make do by our-selves, with some help from the West. True, we owe Russia money for oil
KEY INDICATORS GDP change (%) Inflation (6) Unemployment (%) Exports (S m) Imports (5 m) Current account balance (Sm) Budget balance (as a % of GDP) Source: IME, EIU, EBRD *EIU projections and gas, and it is not yet demanding payment. That is about a billion dollars, which is a huge sum for us. That is the major gain that Lukashenko has won for us. But we are getting no special favours on the price, which is the same as the Baltic states pay.
Lukashenko's manoeuvres are all too reminiscent of Yeltsin's "constitutional assembly", his abolishing of the local soviets and appointment of local administrations, his use of referendums preceded by "social" decrees designed to win popular support. Lukashenko has two budgets: the state budget and his personal budget, larger than the first. He simply orders the printing of more money, though by law only the National Bank controls currency emission. In the second half of 1996, Lukashenko issued a series of "social" decrees: pensions and student stipends were to be raised at the beginning of 1997; public service employees were to receive a quarterly raise of 500,000 rubles, and so forth. His populism has gone into high gear: he personally participated in the harvest; he personally decided and read out on television the list of topics for high school graduation essays; he even sent out his own commission to prevent corruption in university entrance decisions.
In reality, he has achieved very little positive and much that is negative in his two and a half years in office. He himself says that his main achievement is having avoided civil war, just like Yeltsin. They both constantly scare the people with civil war if the opposition prevails.
Lukashenko has brought in tactical police forces from the provinces. He does not trust
Minsk police. It is worth noting that there are three and a half times more internal security forces in Belarus than army soldiers and that the wages of police and internal forces are two and half times higher than those of soldiers. A university teacher today earns
800,000 rubles a month; an industrial worker can earn about a million; but a rank-and-file policemen makes four million. *
Notes
1. This is an edited version of presentations, supplemented by an interview, made at a union education seminar in St. Petersburg on October 16-18 organised by the School of Work Democracy in co-operation with the trade union of the Kirov Factory and the Leningrad
Federation of Trade Unions. Edited and translated by
2. closely linked to the Association of Industrial Unions, David Mandel.
which includes the auto and radio-electronics workers, the two most progressive unions in the country. This association is not an alternative to the Federation of
Trade Unions of Belarus but an independent structure whose members remains in the federation. 1993 1994 1995 1996' -9.5 -20.2 -13.0 -10.0 1,994 2,220 703 32 1.5 2.1 2.5 25 2,836 3,138 3,135 3,167 3,190 3,680 3,520 3,564 na -545 -379 412 -8.3 -1.5 -32 na
** EIU forecosts