Belarus president: “Until you kill me, there will be no other elections” | Hacker News Reader

Belarus president: “Until you kill me, there will be no other elections”

news.sky.com

70 pointsapsec11241 comments

Well now it would be rude to not try.

In the spirit of "those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable," and all.

It looks like he is looking for an excuse to invite non NATO troops into his country. That non-NATO entity has already signaled it’s ready to send troops if asked.[1]

When your dictatorship is in trouble, who’re you gonna call? Right now the answer lies west of the Ural Mountains.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/belarus-president-put...

Seems like Ukraine 2, electric boogaloo.

A total repeat of Syria. Russia backed Assad, just need this guy to start gassing his people too.

I lived in Belarus between 1989 and 1999, I still have the Belarusian passport and I vote.

Syria is different. The population of Belarus is fairly uniform, mostly urban and well educated.

They are unbelievably peaceful. Just look at the pictures of the protests. No car was burned, no window smashed in 8 days by the protesters.

The only people damaging property, beating and killing others were riot police and special forces, and they were bred in the spirit of violence for years.

I am still afraid that once peaceful crowds learn the true fate of those missing, they will storm the prisons with bare hands and die by hundreds.

You can only push a population so far before they rationally decide that it’s now “do or die” and mean that literally.

That would be pretty much the end of his dictatorship - you can't be a dictator where you are 100% dependent on somebody else's troops. He could still be a pro-forma ruler but everybody would know he's just a sock puppet now. It would be de-facto Anschluss. Which Putin has been dreaming about for ages, so he's of course more than willing.

He is smart enough to know that western powers would never intervene. Putin actually profits from a weak Lukashenko because he can fortify the position of Russia in Belarus, which still is a pretty bad dictatorship, worse than Russia itself as a "Soviet Socialist Republic". Putin knows that Lukashenko pretty much has to do everything he asks for.

I think Lukashenko wants to provoke here to either legitimize his crackdown or wants Russia getting involved in a war against "terrorism".

I can't help but take this opportunity to say just how amazing Belarus protesters are:

* They take off their shoes to stand on the bench [1] [2].

* They remove all the garbage after them [3]. Streets after protests are cleaner than before.

[1] - https://t.me/nexta_live/8250

[2] - https://twitter.com/belteanews/status/1294022770771341312

[3] - https://twitter.com/belteanews/status/1295014755850235904

That seems like a very unwise thing to say during mass protests.

Edit: he’s also giving up all pretense of legitimate, democratic rule, which is interesting. I guess with the mass protests the “we won 80% of the vote” lie finally no longer held any water.

Wording it like a challenge probably means he hopes there will be attempts. If we're to take any of this at near-face value, then it seems like he would love a reason to call in help from places he's claimed have offered.

I definitely feel for the people of Belarus right now.

You are correct, sir. Although it might also just be for using his own powers and not per se foreign ones.

In most systems like these, any form of violence (by citizens) is used as an excuse to respond with (disproportional) repressive violence. Many citizens know this, and many have learned it the hard way. So they try to disrupt and disable the system trough non-violent means, which is truly is terrifying for any totalitarian regime. Often such regimes will then resort to brazenly taunting the people and hoping at least someone will bite (given them the excuse they need). They may also just stage violence or an assassination attempt, just to get their way and use the only tool they know: control through (the threat of) violence.

In fact, ironically, that might also be a rather fitting approximation to characterize the (actual) way the USA conducts its foreign policy towards many countries, particularly China and above all Russia. But that's another story.

I feel like he is digging his own grave. After social media and the twitter revolution, it's not something I would say in where mass protests are already under way. Dude is way to divorced from reality. Just look how many revolutions and mass protests we had over the last 10 years. Lukashenko will need to go full on Assad if he wants to stay in place. Not going to happen.

Sheer numbers are what overthrows regimes. This is why those in power try to kill protest before it can reach critical mass. Something happened here to tip it over.

I'm not sure that people will take what he's hoping from that...

Is anyone surprised? It's a case for a psychiatrist. The recent speech of this jerk is complete demagoguery which also shows how scared he is.

And he is not a president anymore, even if he calls himself such.

Mind you the USA has a sitting president that didn’t win the election by way of a popular vote. More so it’s believed he cheated, though we know that everything that led to the elections was wrong from an ethical point of view. It’s very hard to get rid of these people once they take control of a country’s institutes and dismantle them one by one.

None of the US presidents every won the election "by way of popular vote", because popular vote is not the way US presidential election is won. It's like complaining that a team who made the most goals won the soccer match instead of the team that run the fastest and has the prettiest shirts, how unfair that is especially that scoring the goal is completely pointless anyway.

Those are the rules. Any rules have people that think they could win if only the rules were different - but they aren't, so every US president is elected according to the rules for US presidential elections, not some other imaginary rules. Time to stop whining about it. If you want to change the rules - there's constitutional amendment procedure, go after it, good luck. Until you're done and the rules are changed, don't whine about somebody winning by the rules that are in play at the time.

USA does not elect the President by way of a popular vote, so your point is irrelevant from the start. Also, no serious person believes he cheated.

Famous last words

"What are you gonna do, stab me?" - Julius Ceasar

The headline makes it seem like he's saying there will be no more elections ever.

But in context he's saying there will not be a do-over election.

When the dude has been in power for 26 years, that's somewhat of a distinction without a difference.

That's an absurd take. Lots of politicians have long tenures because they've won re-election. That is not the same as suspending elections.

> Lots of politicians have long tenures because they've won re-election.

Like Kim Jong-un? Who wins every re-election with 100% of the vote?

Why not Chuck Schumer, who has been winning elections for 40 years without a loss?

Clearly one should care about the fairness of the election process, not that someone wins lots of elections. To say that winning multiple elections is the same as ending democracy is, as I said, an absurd take.

Winning every election is really not something that can be taken at face value. If those elections are being won unfairly, or if the will of the people is to institute a term limit, then yes, they are effectively suspending the changing of leadership, which is the same as what a person means when they say "suspending elections". I also don't appreciate immediately jumping to calling a differing opinion "absurd".

Well, he's not wrong.

Big words are easy when his puppet master "guaranteed" him total support..

Are you talking about Trump?

That's a boss

I’m guessing the President of Belarus is backed by Putin?

Probably not the only one ....

Given he's called in Putin to provide security I'm guessing he wants people to try?

It's not clear that Russia will want to get involved beyond some sort of symbolic effort. They gave a fairly non-answer answer to Lukashenko's request for aid.

I feel like the quote truncated the last part "I triple dog dare you"

Seems pretty spot on how to history goes down. My history of US economics professor, used to love saying something akin to:

"The only thing that history tells us for sure, is if you leave people with nothing, one day, the people will come and remove your head from your body."

I'm not quite sure why he'd so willfully encourage it unless he's burnt out or has a suicide wish.

This headline highlights a huge problem with modern journalism. Their bias towards civility and appearing unbiased means they often refuse to call a spade a spade. When a guy says you have to kill him to get another election, he should lose the respect and legitimacy that comes with the title of "president". At the very least they should call him the head of state and not lend his "election" legitimacy by referring to him with a title defined by being an elective office.

Contradictory quotes have been attributed:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election/im-not-a...

I don't know what language he originally spoke in. Either he has difficulty with English, or he was mistranslated.

> “We’ve held elections,” he said. “Until you’ve killed me there won’t be any new elections.”

> “We’ll put the changes to a referendum, and I’ll hand over my constitutional powers. But not under pressure or because of the street,” Lukashenko said, in remarks quoted by the official Belta news agency.

> “Yes, I’m not a saint. You know my harsh side. I’m not eternal. But if you drag down the first president you’ll drag down neighbouring countries and all the rest.”

> He also said people could hold parliamentary and presidential elections after the referendum if that was what they wanted.

He spoke Russian, here is the clip: https://censor.net.ua/en/news/3214153/until_you_kill_me_ther...

I'm a native Russian speaker. He said something like "We held the elections. Until you kill me, there will be no different elections.", meaning the elections will not be cancelled (this also follows from the previous context in the video).

Likely both. For example, “Until you’ve killed me..." is "Russian" speak for "over my dead body".

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