This Friday something rather unexpected happened in Belarus. The date for next years presidential elections was set to 19 March, instead of 16 July as had been expected. Sure, there had been rumours for at least a year that the elections may be carried out early, and lately these rumours have intensified. But personally, I was inclined to write them off as speculation or deliberately planted disinformation to confuse the opposition in its strategy. Early elections would show that the regime was not confident about its control of the political situation, and Lukashenko prefers not to appear weak. Still, they have now definitely been set for 19 March, only three months away.
Many people connect this step to Lukashenko's meeting with Russia's president Vladimir Putin the previous day in Sochi. Some say that Moscow needs to get the Belarusian elections over with, so that they can host this summer's G8 summit without too much fuzz about post-Soviet democracy issues. Others suspect that there may be some covert deal involved, like selling the gas transit company Beltransgaz to Moscow or finally going through with establishing the so called union state that the two countries agreed upon six years ago. I am not sure about any of this, but I am fairly certain that Lukashenko would have got Moscow's blessing for staying in power regardless of when he had decided to carry out the elections.
The Belarusian opposition candidate Aleksandr Milinkevich is now trying to maintain a brave face, saying it won't matter when he will defeat Lukashenko. In fact, the date does matter. During the first two months after the united opposition appointed Milinkevich its candidate on 2 October, not much happened on the ground to promote him. It is only in the last couple of weeks that he has seriously started travelling and meeting with people around the country. And I am not aware that much else is going on in terms of promotion. The time left for the opposition to deliver on its promise to knock on two and a half million doors now looks scarce.
There is, however, a more acute deadline. Any candidate now has this coming week to hand in registration documents for initiative groups that will then have the right to collect signatures for him. Considering that at least 100 000 signatures are formally needed, and that the opposition has been talking about collecting a whole million of them in order to make denial of Milinkevich's candidature impossible, one can only hope that teams around the country are standing by to be registered. The head of Milinkevich's staff, Sergey Kalyakin, has said that this is so but it still remains to be seen.
Asked by Radio Liberty's Belarusian service to comment on the announcement of early elections, I said that if Lukashenko is nervous about something it is probably popular sentiment rather than the organisational strength of the opposition. Both are however difficult to judge at this moment, as I am not aware of any comprehensive independent opinion polls conducted since September. The candle-lighting on the opposition's monthly day of solidarity, which also occurred on this Friday, does still not seem to have reached a mass which would encourage people to take a stand for change.
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PS. Solidarity day was honoured by a small gathering in Stockholm, with twelve Belarusians and immigrants from other post-Soviet countries, plus three Swedish liberals of which I was one. DS.
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