Belarus: Is There a Winner Six Months After the 2020 Elections?
Monday, February 1, 2021
8:00 am – 9:30 am EST/GMT-5 Online Event
This Central European University Democracy Institute event is a roundtable exploring what kind of political stabilization or destabilization may be awaiting Belarus.
Please note this is an online event and registration is required. Registration link
PANELISTS
Kateryna Bornukova, Academic Director, BEROC Economic Research Center
Anaïs Marin, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House
Artyom Shraibman, Nonresident Scholar,Carnegie Moscow Center
Gábor Tóka, Senior Research Fellow, Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives, Central European University
Kenneth S. Yalowitz, Adjunct Lecturer, Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies
Addressing one of her last election rallies in the summer, independent presidential candidate Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya prepared her followers for a patient wait until their apparent will to unseat their country’s long-serving and proudly authoritarian president Lukashenka will be honored. It will take more than just casting votes to get their will expressed in the outcome that matters, she suggested. But she will be there to fight for a fair acknowledgement of the true election results for many months if need be.
Nearly six months after the rigged August 9 elections, Tsikhanouskaya is in half-voluntary exile, and many of her supporters are in prison after a reported 30,000 were detained and often treated brutally by the security forces. Crucially, the latter remained, at least as an organization, loyal to the incumbent after he was (self-) declared the winner of the election while the massive, spirited and impressively enduring post-electoral protests of Tsikhanouskaya’s supporters slowly but inevitably diminished in size and determination. However, not only the pro-democracy movement and all foreign governments aspiring for influence in Belarus seem deprived of the outcome that they hoped for, but Lukashenka’s regime also remains severely deprived of domestic political authority and international respect.
Our roundtable shall explore what kind of political stabilization or destabilization may be awaiting Belarus, what the realistic options and constraints are for the regime, the opposition, Russia, and the international community concerned over the state of human rights in Belarus.
Please note this is an online event and registration is required. Registration link