Maidan in Belarus is actively provoked by the authorities themselves

Will there be a Maidan in Belarus? Now this issue is perhaps the most discussed in Belarusian society. Moreover, the tone in this discussion is set not by the opposition, which seems to be interested in changing the government, but by the government itself.

Even Lukashenko himself yesterday, on the eve of a meeting with KGB Chairman Viktor Vakulchik, speaking about his opponents, managed to use the word “Maidan” and its derivatives three times in a phrase of 50 words. His henchmen, like deputy and one of the regime’s ideologists Igor Marzalyuk, even call the three main alternative candidates “harbingers of the civil war,” and the atmosphere continues to heat up.

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So will there be a Maidan? Now the situation is developing very dynamically. Just a week ago, the main competitor of the current president, Viktor Babariko, tried to avoid confrontation with him, and yesterday he took to the Central Election Commission a folder with incriminating evidence confirming numerous violations by Lukashenko’s team and demanding that he be removed from the elections.

Two weeks ago, blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky was imprisoned in Gomel for XNUMX hours and it seemed that he would not be released before the elections. Now he is sitting again. But during this time he was released, registered his wife as a presidential candidate, became the head of her election headquarters, united the bulk of the opposition and sat down again after a clumsily executed provocation, but as a martyr and protest icon, and his wives are now lining up at pickets kilometer-long queues.

Three weeks ago it seemed that the elections would be boring, and the coronavirus would not allow anyone to collect signatures except Lukashenko and the “Belarusian Zhirinovsky” Oleg Gaidukevich, but now it is obvious that it will definitely not be boring, Gaidukevich withdrew in favor of Lukashenko, two candidates have already collected 100 thousand signatures and at least three more have a good chance of this.

Now there are still 10 such weeks left before the elections, each of which will be very difficult for Lukashenko. His popularity continues to fall, the authorities make one mistake after another, demonstrate weakness and unpredictability, while competitors play strong and technically. These elections are the first in which Lukashenko’s rating obviously and seriously falls short of half. Of course, not 2-6 percent of the electorate is now in favor of him, as independent polls show, but hardly more than a third.

And he doesn’t see any ways to radically change public opinion in his favor. It will not be possible to pump the economy with money and increase the standard of living in time for the elections - resources are limited, and the country is just entering a large-scale crisis, which many have not yet felt, but will feel by August.

Scare people with thugs eager for power? The same Babariko does not look like a scumbag at all and in general looks much more adequate than Lukashenko himself. Suppress the protest by force even before the elections, without waiting for it to develop into the Maidan? The situation with Tikhanovsky’s arrest and numerous detentions of his supporters showed that this year the use of force only emphasizes protest activity. And the force used before the vote cannot but undermine Lukashenko’s already low popularity. And the more actively it is used now, the more people will take to the streets after the elections, the more vulnerable Lukashenko’s position will be after such elections, both within the country and on the world stage.

Now, to a much greater extent than the opposition, the Maidan in Belarus is provoked by the authorities themselves with their sharp, but uncertain and inconsistent actions. The same Tikhanovsky was first detained, then unexpectedly released, not allowed to register his own initiative group, but did not prevent him from registering it in the name of his wife, then he was completely arrested on a far-fetched pretext, and criminal charges were brought against him.

If none of this had happened, his position would have been much weaker. There will certainly be mass demonstrations after the elections. And it is already clear that in terms of mass scale they will surpass even the events of December 19, 2010. Will Lukashenko be able to suppress these protests and retain power? If he doesn’t lose control over the security forces and the nomenklatura, then he can. But such a victory will be Pyrrhic.