Alexander Lukashenko

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Alexander Lukashenko Алякса́ндар Лукашэ́нка Алекса́ндр Лукаше́нко
1st President of the Republic of Belarus
Incumbent
Assumed office  July 20, 1994
Preceded by	Myechyslaw Hryb (as chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus)
Born	August 30, 1954 Kopys, Belarus

Alexander Lukashenko (Belarusian: Алякса́ндар Рыго́равіч Лукашэ́нка, Aljaksandar Ryhoravič Lukašenka/Alyaksandar Ryhoravich Lukashenka; Russian: Алекса́ндр Григо́рьевич Лукаше́нко, Aleksandr Grigoryevich Lukashenko) (b. August 30, 1954) has been the President of Belarus since 1994.

Contents 1 Early career (to 1994) 2 First term (1994–2001) 3 Second term (2001–2006) 4 International opposition 5 2006 presidential election 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Early career (to 1994)

Lukashenko was born in 1954 in the settlement of Kopys in the Vitebsk voblast of what was then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. He graduated from the Mogilev Pedagogical Institute in 1975, leading a Komsomol chapter in Mogilev from 1977-1978. In 1975-1977 and in 1980-1982 Lukashenko served in the frontier troops (Border Guards of KGB) and in the Soviet Army. After leaving the armed forces, he became the deputy chairman of a collective farm in 1982 and in 1985, after graduating from the Belarussian Agricultural Academy, he was promoted to the post of director of the Gorodets state farm and construction materials plant in the Shklov district.

In 1990, Lukashenko was elected as a Deputy in the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus, his first step as a politician. He founded a faction called Communists for Democracy, which advocated a democratic Soviet Union run on communist principles. He claims to have been the only deputy of the Belarusian parliament who voted against ratification of the December 1991 agreement that dissolved the Soviet Union and set up the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR, Lukashenko briefly returned to management of a state farm.

Having acquired a reputation as an eloquent opponent of corruption, Lukashenko was elected in 1993 to serve as the chairman of the anti-corruption committee of the Belarusian parliament. Although he maintained a close association with leftist Communist factions, he fell out of favour with much of the Party of Communists of Belarus for his attacks on the corruption and privileges of the Communist nomenklatura.

In late 1993, he accused 70 senior government officials of corruption including stealing state funds for personal purposes. Stanislav Shushkevich, the speaker of the parliament, was accused by Lukashenko of failing to tackle government corruption. Lukashenko's accusations led to a vote of confidence, which Shushkevich lost. Some believe that the vague nature of the charges indicates they were merely a pretext for removing Shushkevich, who had become increasingly unpopular among the conservative parliamentary majority.^[1][2]

A new Belarusian constitution enacted in early 1994 paved the way for the first democratic presidential elections, held in July that year. Six candidates stood, including Lukashenko, who campaigned as an independent on a populist platform of "defeat[ing] the mafia." Shushkevich and Vyacheslav Kebich also ran, with the latter regarded as the clear favourite. In the event, Lukashenko won 45% of the vote against 15% for Kebich and only 10% for Shushkevich. A second round was held on July 10 in which Lukashenko won over 80% of the vote.

[edit] First term (1994–2001)

[edit] Second term (2001–2006)

Lukashenko's original five-year term of office ran out in July 1999 but had been extended to 2001 by the 1996 referendum. Elections were held on September 9, 2001, in which Lukashenko campaigned on a platform broadly similar to that of 1994: retention of the planned economy; a full merger with Russia but no Russian-style shock therapy; strong presidential rule to maintain social order; opposition to the enlargement of NATO and the West in general. His opponent was Uladzimir Hancharyk.

Lukashenko won in the first round in what was claimed to be a landslide victory. However, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe described the process as "failing to meet international standards" and human rights organizations reported that opposition supporters were systematically harassed, arbitrarily barred from standing as candidates or voting and were excluded from the state-run media. Western governments also criticised the elections. Russia, by contrast, publicly welcomed Lukashenko's re-election. Jane's Intelligence surmised that the price of Russian support for Lukashenko ahead of the presidential elections was the surrender of Minsk's control over its section of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline.^[3]

Lukashenko promotes himself as a "man of the people". Because of his style of rule, he is often informally referred to as bat'ka, which is literally translated as "dad", but the word has the meaning of "chieftain" in the history of the Slavic peoples. He was elected chairman of the Belarusian Olympic Committee, despite the IOC rules precluding high state officials from holding such a post.

During a televised address to the nation on September 7, 2004 Lukashenko announced plans for a referendum on whether to eliminate presidential term limits. This was held on October 17, 2004, the same day as parliamentary elections, and according to official results was approved by 79.42% of voters. Previously, Lukashenko had been limited to two terms and thus would have been constitutionally required to step down after the presidential elections in 2006.

Opposition groups, the OSCE, EU, and US State Dept have accused state TV channels of pro-Lukashenko bias and transmitting pro-Lukashenko propaganda and election day polls at midday on October 17, although Belarusian law prohibits this. The opposition and western observers said that the vote was fraudulent. The OSCE mission said it "fell significantly short of international standards". CIS monitors on the other hand stated that vote was held without significant violations.

[edit] International opposition

Lukashenko continues to face domestic opposition from a coalition of opposition groups bankrolled by the United States and Europe, although these have tended to be weak, divided, hampered by the government's restrictions and underfunded. The United States Congress has sought to aid the opposition groups by introducing a Belarus Democracy Act in 2001, 2002, 2003, and finally passing it in 2004 to introduce sanctions against Lukashenko's government and provide financial and other support to the opposition. This is modelled on the overt and covert support given to the opposition in Serbia, which successfully toppled President Slobodan Milošević in 2000. Lukashenko has been characteristically defiant, declaring that "there will be no Koštunica here" (a reference to Vojislav Koštunica, the Serb politician who replaced Milošević).

[edit] 2006 presidential election

Main article: Belarusian presidential election, 2006

In October 2005 Lukashenko confirmed his intent to seek a third term in office. In 2006 the liberal and nationalist opposition rallied around Alexander Milinkevich.

On March 19, 2006 exit polls showed Lukashenko winning a third term in a landslide, amid opposition claims of vote-rigging and fear of violence. The EcooM organization gave Lukashenko 84.2% of the vote and Milinkevich just 2 percent, while the Belarusian Committee of Youth Organizations, gave Lukashenko 84.2% and Milinkevich 3.1 percent. The Gallup Organization has noted that EcooM and the Belarusian Committee of Youth Organizations are government-controlled and both released their exit poll results before noon on election day, although voting stations closed at 8 p.m. [3]

Belarus authorities vowed to crush unrest in the event of large-scale protests following the election (such as those that marked the Orange Revolution in Ukraine). Despite that, the crowd of demonstrators rallying after the election was the biggest the opposition had mustered in years, with nightly protests and demonstrations in Minsk. The turnout at the biggest protest on election night was about 10,000 according to AP reporters' estimates [4]

Opposition leaders called for another demonstration to be carried out on March 25. Several thousand people gathered in the center of Minsk, where Milinkevich and Kozulin made a speech about political situation in the country.

Election observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) differed on the Belarus vote (see [5]).

The OSCE declared on March 20, 2006 that the "presidential election failed to meet OSCE commitments for democratic elections." The OSCE stated that Lukashenko "permitted State authority to be used in a manner which did not allow citizens to freely and fairly express their will at the ballot box," and concluded that "a pattern of intimidation and the suppression of independent voices . . . was evident throughout the campaign." [6] The CIS observers, in contrast, declared the Belarus presidential election open and transparent. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs declared, "Long before the elections, the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights had declared that they [the elections] would be illegitimate and it was pretty biased in its commentaries on their progress and results, thus playing an instigating role".

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• President's official site
• BBC - Profile: Alexander Lukashenko
• Statement at the 60th Session of the UN General Assembly

Preceded by Myechyslaw Hryb

President of Belarus 1994-present

Succeeded by Incumbent