The Globe and Mail, Canada
Dec 29 2004
Orange Revolution eyes Belarus
Activist recruiting Yushchenko backers to help in campaign against
President
By MARK MacKINNON
KIEV — Ukraine’s Orange Revolution is not over yet, but Denis
Buinitsky already is recruiting for what he hopes will be Eastern
Europe’s next popular uprising.
“Who’s coming to the revolution in Belarus?” the activist shouted,
waving his arms to draw a crowd to a list he had mounted last night
in the tent city that still blocks traffic on Kiev’s Khreshchatyk
Street.
Within minutes, a short line of orange-clad students forms to write
their names, addresses and cellphone numbers in red ink on the long,
white piece of paper. They are the young foot soldiers of the
movement that brought Ukraine’s pro-Western opposition leader, Viktor
Yushchenko, to the brink of the presidency.
And like modern-day Che Guevaras, they say they are ready to march on
to the next revolution as soon as their cellphones ring to tell them
where it is.
Four years ago, it happened in Serbia, where student-led street
protests brought down Slobodan Milosevic. Last year, it was the Rose
Revolution in Georgia, when Eduard Shevardnadze was forced from power
after a rigged election.
Then came the recent weeks of protests in Kiev, triggered by a
falsified presidential vote on Nov. 21, that forced the regime of
President Leonid Kuchma and his clique to the brink.
Ukraine’s Central Election Commission said yesterday that with all
votes from Sunday’s election rerun counted, Mr. Yushchenko has 52 per
cent of the vote to 44 per cent for Mr. Kuchma’s hand-picked
successor, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.
The results are not official until all complaints of fraud are
studied, a process expected to last into the new year.
Mr. Yanukovich, citing alleged irregularities, has said he will
challenge the vote count in court. However, the Council of Europe,
pointing to reports from international observers who say the election
was relatively free and fair, called yesterday for him to concede
defeat.
Although critics, notably in the Kremlin, argue that all three
uprisings were designed and paid for by Washington, there is no
question they had massive support among people who longed for
something better.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, the young reformer who led
the demonstrations in Tbilisi last year and succeeded Mr.
Shevardnadze as President, said that what happened in Serbia, Georgia
and Ukraine is the leading edge of a third wave of European
liberation — the first being after the defeat of Nazi Germany in the
Second World War, the second after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Mr. Buinitsky hopes the wave will next hit his native Belarus, a
country of 10 million in the centre of Europe that has been ruled for
a decade by the dictatorial President Alexander Lukashenko.
During those 10 years, the country lapsed into economic backwardness
and become an international pariah for its poor human-rights record.
“People in Kiev have freedom now; this isn’t the case in Minsk.
Lukashenko has made it impossible to hold such a demonstration there
because people know if they go into the streets they will go to
prison. But maybe it will be possible some day soon,” Mr. Buinitsky
said, standing outside a tent erected in the centre of Kiev for
Belarussian activists. “This has given us hope.”
It’s not just Belarussians who suddenly talk of peaceful revolution.
Activists from pro-democracy movements across the former Soviet Union
joined the protests in Kiev, anxious to show their support and,
perhaps, learn a few tricks.
The flags of Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia were flown
above the orange-clad crowd on Independence Square. Boris Nemtsov, a
co-leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces party in Russia, said
from the stage in the early days after the Nov. 21 vote: “We need to
have freedom and democracy in Ukraine so that we can have freedom and
democracy in Russia.”
Moscow-based political analysts said the regimes in Russia and other
former Soviet states can be expected to tighten, rather than loosen,
the controls, in an effort to prevent the Georgian and Ukrainian
examples from being repeated in their backyards.
The authorities in faraway Kyrgyzstan, part of which was Soviet
Central Asia, are nervous and warn that their country is facing an
“orange danger” ahead of a parliamentary election in February.
Belarus’s opposition is calling on its supporters to gather on March
25 in Minsk’s central October Square to demand that Mr. Lukashenko
step down.
If he rejects this ultimatum, organizers said, they will prepare for
their own Orange Revolution around the presidential vote scheduled
for the same date in 2006.
“If there will be too few of us, the regime won’t hesitate,” reads a
leaflet delivered to 500,000 homes in Minsk this month.
“If tens of thousands go onto the streets, as in Kiev, it will not
dare to shoot at people.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress