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Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (Lukashenka) (Belarusian: Алякса́ндар Рыго́равіч Лукашэ́нка, Template:Lang-ru) (born August 30, 1954) has been the President of Belarus since 1994. Since assuming office, his actions have been described by detractors as authoritarian and dictatorial, while his supporters claim that his policies have spared Belarus the worst effects of post-Soviet economic reform.

A former state farm (sovkhoz) director, Lukashenko is widely credited in Belarus with restoring Belarus's shattered post-Soviet economy. A 2005 World Bank report judged that "economic growth in Belarus has been genuine and robust", and the benefits have been widely shared among the population. Under Lukashenko, official unemployment stands at less than 2 percent, poverty has fallen, and the average monthly income is higher than in many other former Soviet republics, including Ukraine. Critics attribute Belarus's economic growth to subsidized energy from Russia and favored access to the Russian market for Belarus' industrial products.

Lukashenko's relations with the West, especially the United States, have been extremely strained. Lukashenko has been attacked by the U.S. as "Europe's last dictator" and leaders of one of the world's "outposts of tyranny," citing the continuation of restrictions on freedom of speech and the press, peaceful assembly, and religion under his leadership and reports of electoral fraud. Belarus has also been barred from joining the Council of Europe. While some independent Western and Russian polling agencies have found that Lukashenko is genuinely popular in Belarus, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have not considered any of the elections held in Belarus under Lukashenko's leadership to have been free and fair.

Early career (to 1994)

Lukashenko was born in the village of Kopys in the Vitebsk voblast of what was then the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Repubic. He graduated from the Mogilev Teaching 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) and in the Soviet Army. After leaving the army, he became the deputy chairman of a collective farm in 1982 and in 1985 was promoted to the post of director of the Gorodets state farm and construction materials plant in the Shklov district. Also in 1985, he graduated from the Belarusian Agricultural Academy.

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, including Stanislav Shushkevich, the speaker of the parliament and the acting president, of corruption including stealing state funds for personal purposes. Lukashenko's accusations forced a vote of confidence which Shushkevich lost. Later the accusations of Shushkevich proved to be without merit.

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 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.

First term (1994-2001)

Lukashenko's victory came as a surprise to many in Belarus and abroad, given his youth and lack of experience. His manifesto during the campaign included establishing a clean government; removing corrupt officials from office and bringing to trial those who had abused their positions; maintaining pay and working conditions in what was still an almost entirely state-run economy; and moving towards greater integration between Belarus and Russia. There were wide-spread rumours in Belarus that he was supported by Russian secret services.

Although he won substantial popular support due to his proclaimed opposition to privatization and market reformers, much of his electoral platform was focused on the corruption of the Belarusian government. He claimed during the campaign that he was facing a constant threat of assassination and that he had even been shot at. He attacked his opponents in lurid terms, promising to expel them "to the Himalayas" if he was elected.

Lukashenko's platform was strongly at odds with the pro-reform policies backed by the leaders of Belarus' neighbours, which had undertaken radical reforms following the fall of Communism. Very little reform, however, had taken place in Belarus. Only 2% of the economy had been privatized by the time of Lukashenko's election. The end of the Soviet command economy, on which Belarus was very heavily dependent, led to a 50% drop in production between 1991 and 1994 and a corresponding fall in living standards. At the time of the 1994 election Belarus faced an economic crisis: the question was what to do about it.

Lukashenko acted quickly to "stabilize the economy": one of his first acts was doubling the minimum wage. He also reintroduced state control of prices and reversed the few economic reforms that had taken place. But he faced great problems in trying to revive a command economy in a country of 10.4 million surrounded by emerging capitalist economies. Belarus was (and still is) wholly dependent on gas and electricity imported from Russia, but most Belarusian enterprises could not pay market rates for energy. The Belarusian government's lack of hard currency to pay for Russian imports made an economic union with Russia a necessity, and one for which both Lukashenko and his opponent Kebich had campaigned.

During his first two years in power, Lukashenko faced an increasingly vocal domestic opposition. In 1995 the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund suspended lending money to Belarus, citing the government's lack of economic reform. The slow pace of market reforms in Belarus drew strong criticism from the opposition, to which Lukashenko reacted angrily.

On September 12, 1995 three hot air balloons participating in the Coupe Gordon Bennett race entered Belarusian air space. Despite the fact that race organizers informed the Belarusian Government about the race in May and that flight plans had been filed, the Belarusian air force shot down one balloon, killing two American citizens, and forced the other two to land. The crews of the other two balloons were fined for entering Belarus without a visa and released. Belarus to date has not apologized or offered compensation for these killings.

In the summer of 1996, 70 deputies of the 110-member Belarusian parliament signed a petition to impeach Lukashenko on charges of violating the Constitution. Lukashenko invited top Russian officials as "mediators" such as former Russian premier Viktor Chernomyrdin and managed to escape immediate impeachment with their support. Shortly after that Lukashenko called a referendum for November 24, 1996 to extend his term of office from four to seven years. It would also give him the power to close down the parliament. On November 25, Lukashenko announced that 70.5% of voters, on an 84% turnout, had approved the measure. The conduct of the referendum was widely condemned. The government banned opposition supporters from TV and radio broadcasts, prevented any opposition newspapers from being printed and seized opposition publicity material. In these circumstances, the United States and the European Union refused to accept the legitimacy of the referendum.

Lukashenko immediately used his new powers to close down the Belarusian parliament. Armed police took over the parliament building and locked out 89 deputies regarded by the government as "disloyal". A new parliament, made up of 110 hand-picked supporters of Lukashenko, was established in a building next door. His actions were widely condemned internationally by governments and human rights groups. The Belarusian Prime Minister and two other ministers resigned in protest, as did seven of the eleven members of the Constitutional Court; they were replaced by Lukashenko supporters who promptly rejected the impeachment petition. Lukashenko consolidated his power by forcibly closing several opposition newspapers and increasing the power of the Belarusian KGB (which, uniquely in the former Soviet Union, had retained its old name and status).

At the start of 1998, the Russian central bank suspended trading in the Belarusian ruble, which led to a collapse in the value of the currency. Lukashenko responded by taking control of the Belarus central bank, ordering the exchange rate to be set back to earlier levels, freezing bank accounts and curtailing the activities of commercial banks. This led to a run on Belarusian banks and a spate of panic buying. Lukashenko also blamed the country's problems on "economic saboteurs" at home and abroad. Thirty government officials were arrested - some paraded on state television - and hundreds of others were "punished". He blamed foreign governments for conspiring against him, and in April 1998 he expelled ambassadors from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Japan from their residential complex near Minsk. This caused an international outcry, as diplomatic residences are supposed to be strictly off limits under the terms of the Vienna Convention. The affronted countries all withdrew their ambassadors, as did, temporarily, Russia.

Although the ambassadors eventually returned after the controversy died down, Lukashenko stepped up his rhetorical attacks against the West and took to portraying his domestic opponents as stooges of hostile foreign powers. He claimed that Western governments were trying to undermine Belarus at all levels, including the economy (ejecting an International Monetary Fund delegation and labelling them "swindlers") and even sporting (claiming that Western countries were conspiring to defraud Belarus of medals in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan).

In an interview with Markus Ziner for a December 1995 edition of the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Lukashenko stirred international controversy with favorable comments towards Hitler. In the interview, he said:

"The history of Germany is somehow a copy of Belarus's history at some point. At the time Germany was raised from the ruins thanks to a firm hand. Not everything that was connected to a certain Adolph Hitler in Germany was bad. Remember his rule in Germany. The German order had grown over centuries. Under Hitler this process reached its culmination. This is perfectly in line with our understanding of a presidential republic and of the role of its president. I want to emphasize that one man cannot be all black or all white. There are positive sides as well. Germany was once built up out of the ruins with the help of a strong presidential force. Germany was raised thanks to this strong force, thanks to the fact that the whole nation united around its leader. Today we are going through a similar period, when we have to unite around one person or group of people in order to survive, hold out and get back on our feet again..." (Handelsblatt, December 1995)

Lukashenko moved beyond rhetoric to take a more active stance of supporting countries in conflict with the West. During the late 1990s, Belarus exported about $400 million worth of armaments annually to an assortment of countries including Iran, Sudan, Iraq - which received anti-aircraft weapons and training - and Yugoslavia. The outbreak of the Kosovo War in 1999 led to Lukashenko proposing a "Slavic Union" of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Yugoslavia, an idea which received only lukewarm support and was quietly dropped. Following the Iraq war of 2003, the United States announced that several high-ranking Iraqi officials had been issued Belarusian passports.

These policies led Western governments to take a tougher position against Lukashenko. The United States was particularly angered by Belarus's arms trade with the so-called "Axis of Evil" countries and American political leaders increasingly began to refer to Belarus as "Europe's last dictatorship", comparing Lukashenko with Serbia's ousted leader Slobodan Milošević. The European Union was concerned for the security of its gas supplies from Russia, which are piped through Belarus, and took an active interest in the country's affairs when the accession of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania gave the EU a lengthy border with Belarus. Even Russia, which established a loose economic union with Belarus in April 1998, grew impatient with the way that Belarus was implementing the union in practice. Although Lukashenko remained useful to Russia in terms of keeping his country in the Russian orbit, his tense relations with the West increasingly became a liability for the government of President Vladimir Putin.

Second term (2001-2006)

Lukashenko's original four-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 command 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 generally. His opponent was Uładzimir Hančaryk.

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 organisations 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.

Despite widespread criticism, Lukashenko dismisses concerns about his authoritarian style of government, claiming it to be the only alternative to instability. He promotes himself as a "man of the people". Because of his style of rule, he is often informally referred to as baćka, which is literally translated as "father", but the word has the meaning of "chieftain" in the history of the Slavic peoples. He has appointed himself 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 next presidential election, due 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 international observers (except for several CIS monitors) said that the vote was fraudulent. The OSCE mission said it "fell significantly short of international standards". An exit poll survey performed by Baltic Surveys, a Lithuanian Gallup Organization, showed that only 48% of people voted "yes" on Lukashenko's referendum, with a margin of error of 1%. On the other hand, this poll is probably skewed, since the majority of Lukashenko supporters are in the countryside, and the poll was performed by a relatively small team (initially 200, but a significant number were banned from polling by the authorities).

Economic policy

Lukashenko's government has come under increasing political and economic pressure from the West and Russia. Although Lukashenko has moved very gradually towards allowing a greater degree of private enterprise, he continues to oppose the privatization of larger state enterprises, and small businesses continue to suffer from restrictive, inconsistent and unstable legal system and government policy for business. In particular, an attempt of a joint venture with Ford Motors failed because of this. Few foreign markets have been found for Belarusian goods, with over 60% of the country's trade going to Russia. This has led to continued economic difficulties, with the Belarusian ruble continuing to decline in value.

Lukashenko has made much of a claim that despite having faced economic problems over the years, Belarus has not experienced the same level of social dislocation seen in Russia after that country's radical reform programme. Belarus, for example, has one of the lowest Gini coefficients in the world, indicating one of the world's most egalitarian distributions of income. Belarus' official rates of unemployment and poverty also remain low. However, many non-Belarusian analysts believe that Lukashenko's approach is ultimately unsustainable and will ultimately require more rapid and painful reform than would otherwise have been necessary.

While World Bank reports point to economic growth under Lukashenko, they highlight deep-seated structural problems in Belarus' Soviet-style economy. A World Bank report explains that, The gains in poverty reduction are shallow and fragile. A key source of economic vulnerability is administratively-set real wage growth which has outstripped productivity growth, jeopardizing the sustainability of growth and poverty reduction. It's noted that, In a high cost, low flexibility business environment, the ability of the economy to create new jobs remains elusive. The competitiveness of Belarusian products in CIS and non-CIS markets "has been deteriorating." The World Bank explains that the growth has been within a few sectors (energy, fuel, and metallurgy), while other enterprises did not experience any noticeable improvements in investment levels before 2003 and the absence of a thriving private sector compromises the ability of Belarus to make necessary adjustments to potential changes in market conditions.

International opposition

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International accuse Lukashenko of widespread violations of human rights. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) issued a resolution on Belarus in April 2003, in which it expressed "deep concern" about human rights in Belarus, and urged the government to release journalists and other individuals detained for politically motivated reasons and to cease harassment of non-governmental organizations and political parties.

During 2000 and 2001, Lukashenko became embroiled in Western criticism. Three opposition figures and a journalist disappeared in 1999 and 2000 in mysterious circumstances, after Lukashenko publicly ordered the security services to crack down on what he termed "opposition scum". Evidence subsequently emerged that implicated the Interior Ministry in the disappearances, which led to allegations that a government "death squad" had been responsible. A number of junior officials were arrested and convicted, but the government intervened to block investigations into the possible involvement of senior ministers. Lukashenko's former interior minister and then sports minister, Yuri Sivakov, wasn't allowed into Greece for the 2004 summer Olympics for his suspected involvement in the disappearances.

International organisations continued to criticise Lukashenko's government during 2002 and 2003. In late 2002, the Belarusian authorities expelled an OSCE delegation, prompting the United States and EU to impose a travel ban on Lukashenko and several high-ranking government officials. The independent media does continue to exist, but under great pressure from the authorities; the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) listed Belarus as among the ten "Worst Places to be a Journalist" in 2003.

In September, European Jewish leaders accused Belarus' Education Ministry of pursuing anti-Semitic policies after officials shut down an institute offering a course in Jewish studies. At the same time the only lyceum in which instruction was done exclusively in Belarusian language was also shut down before the school year ended. Nevertheless the lyceum continued studies in rented space, but the exit exams were not officially recognized. Fortunately for the graduates, a test system was introduced for entering into higher education institutions, so that the results of the exit exams were less important. Also, the neighboring countries (e.g., Lithuania and Poland) offered to recognize their lyceum diploma.

Lukashenko continues to face domestic opposition from a coalition of opposition groups, although these have tended to be weak, divided, hampered by the government's restrictions and underfunded. The United States Congress has sought to address the latter problem 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 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). "No way! This must be clear to you and all those who count on it."

2006 presidential election

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.

Belarus authorities vowed to crush unrest in the event of large-scale protests following the election. Despite that, the crowd of demonstrators rallying after the election was the biggest the opposition had mustered in years, reaching at least 10,000, according to AP reporters' estimates.

Election observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) differed on the Belarus vote. CIS observers declared the Belarus presidential vote open and transparent. However, 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."

References

1. M J A Standish. "Editor's notes." Jane's Intelligence Digest. 11 january 2006.

External links

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

• 1954 births
• Presidents of Belarus
• Belarusian politicians
• Current national leaders
• Living people