Belarus will hold presidential elections in little over two months, and four weeks of signature collection for candidates are now half-way through. The united opposition candidate, Aleksandr Milinkevich, managed to register an initiative group of some five thousand people who are now collecting signatures for him. A few days ago, they were said to have reached the 100,000 which is the officially required minimum to run. If the election had not been announced earlier than expected, and in such a haste, the opposition could probably have got more people to work for him. This would have been good, since knocking on as many doors as possible is the main opportunity they have to build popular support.
Meanwhile, although Lukashenko's initiative group is not bigger than Milinkevich's by more than a thousand, it has already claimed to have collected 930,000 signatures.
Of course, the regime can make any claim it wants, true or false, without much scrutiny. But there are reports that people are forced to sign en masse in student homes and at work places (from which Milinkevich's collectors are excluded), so the figure may not be that unrealistic. Another fact also bears witness to the seriousness with which Lukashenko looks at this election campaign: the identity of the man he has chosen to head his initiative group.
In the 2001 election, this role was fulfilled by Nikolay Cherginets, a former police general and member of the parliament's upper house. This time, however, the president has brought in the person who many consider his most loyal servant, Viktor Sheyman.
Sheyman, who is a former army officer and veteran from the Afghan war, was in charge of Lukashenko's personal security already during his first election campaign in 1994. At that time, he is supposed to have arranged a fake assault on the candidate, intended to boost his rating, by firing a few rounds at his car. After the election victory, Sheyman was appointed head of the newly formed Security Council. In that capacity, he organised the infamous death squad that assassinated first some thirty crime bosses, and then some of the president's foremost political opponents.
The cover-up of these crimes involved removing Sheyman from the Security Council in 2000, and make him Prosecutor General instead. A year ago he was appointed head of the presidential administration, officially making him the second person in the country. This job, however, he had to abandon in order to lead the president's initiative group, since legal niceties would prohibit him from carrying out both duties at the same time. There are now speculations that he will return to his old post at the Security Council once the election is over.
Sheyman is believed to enjoy the president's trust more than anyone else. There is a story, according to which Lukashenko once asked him if he was really loyal. Silently, Sheyman pulled out a gun and put it to his temple. From the expression in his eyes, the president understood that the trigger would be pulled if he said so.
I have seen Sheyman live once. This happened in 2001, the day after the last presidential election, at Lukashenko's triumphant press conference. Two meters before me, on first row, sat Sheyman together with Cherginets, the president's campaign manager, and Lidiya Yermoshina, the chairwoman of the Central Election Commission. They all smiled at each other and seemed quite happy.
0 comments:
Post a Comment