Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- [From the Bully of Belarus to the last Soviet Style Strongman to Europe's Last Outlaw to Josef Vissarionovich himself. My how Alexander Lukashenko's, or rather the New York Times', reputation has been tarnished.] New York Times SEP 11, 2001 Stalinist Victory in Belarus Is Condemned By MICHAEL WINES INSK, Sept. 10 — With the prominent exception of Russia, foreign leaders, diplomats and human rights groups today condemned the officially overwhelming re-election of Europe's last Stalinist leader, President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus, as fundamentally flawed. Several said the outcome was destined to ostracize still further a nation already shunned by much of the democratic world. The government said this morning that a preliminary vote count showed that Mr. Lukashenko had won Sunday's election with 75.6 percent of the vote, swamping the democratic opposition candidate Vladimir Goncharik, who had 15.4 percent. The remainder was split between an ultranationalist candidate and those who voted against all three. Mr. Lukashenko, who won a five- year extension of his presidency, first won election in 1994. He extended his term in a 1996 constitutional referendum that independent monitors say was flawed by some of the same failings as the Sunday vote. In a victory speech on Sunday evening, he called his re-election "elegant and beautiful" and a triumph for the nation's people. Mr. Goncharik asserted today that the vote was rigged, saying his supporters' monitoring at 500 of the nation's 6,700 precincts indicated that Mr. Lukashenko won a plurality of 46 percent to his 40 percent. Under Belarus law, a runoff election is required when no candidate wins an outright majority. Russian observers joined with those from other former Soviet nations in decreeing Mr. Lukashenko's victory both democratic and fair. President Vladimir V. Putin congratulated Mr. Lukashenko today on what he called a convincing win. But even the Russians, who are allied with Belarus in a loose diplomatic and economic union, allowed that the government's behavior was at times problematic. The chairman of Russia's Central Election Commission, Aleksandr A. Vishnyakov, expressed distress over the government's election-day shutdown of opposition web sites, e-mail, telephone service and even cellular telephone access. "If it's true, it's very bad news," he said in an interview on Sunday in Minsk, shortly after word of the censorship spread on Russian television and among observers. Western human rights groups and observers, in news conferences and reports, charged that Mr. Lukashenko had rigged the election long before the actual vote by blocking his opponents from the media, smearing and thwarting independent vote monitors, intimidating voters and election officials and conducting a vote that was wide open to manipulation. In a post-mortem issued this afternoon, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which monitors civil rights and elections, said the Belarus election failed to meet the democratic standards that Mr. Lukashenko himself agreed to in past meetings of the organization's member nations. For his part, Mr. Lukashenko was unrepentant. On Sunday, even before the European group delivered its verdict, the president declared that the head of the O.S.C.E.'s mission in Minsk, Hans-Georg Wieck, would be expelled from Belarus for espionage if he does not leave voluntarily. "Our elections don't need the recognition of anybody," Mr. Lukashenko said. Hrair Balian, the head of the organization's elections section, said in an interview that the flaws of the election lay not so much in the reasonably orderly vote but in the weeks of campaigning and months of harassment that preceded it. Of 80,000 local, provincial and national election commissioners — officials whose ostensible job is to ensure an impartial vote — all but 230 were nominated or appointed by the government, Mr. Balian noted. As much as 20 percent of the electorate was reported to have cast ballots in a five-day "early voting" period before Sunday, a procedure he said was potentially wide open to ballot-stuffing. "It was an uneven playing field," Mr. Balian said. "That sums it up." George A. Folsom, president of the International Republican Institute, said weeks of observation by his organization and others, including the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, led inexorably to the conclusion that the election was neither free nor fair. "It was an election that was designed to have one outcome: the election of Lukashenko," he said. This morning Mr. Goncharik said he would file a complaint with the Belarus Central Election Commission demanding that the vote be annulled. The Belarusian Helsinki Committee, an arm of the internationally known human-rights organization, also planned to file a complaint alleging what its leader, Tatyana Bratko, called "gross violations of existing legislation" governing Belarus elections. She said Mr. Lukashenko was returning the nation to an era reminiscent of Soviet times, when laws were selectively enforced and government candidates always elected in landslides. "If we are coming back to the past," she pledged, "then we will be referred to as dissidents — not as human-rights activists." __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email alerts & NEW webcam video instant messaging with Yahoo! Messenger http://im.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
