Adobe Photoshop is not only a must for web designers and photo correction specialists, but it’s also a wonderful program for political satirists and pranksters. In authoritarian countries like Belarus, the former often become the latter. Isn’t it a pretty decent hobby to express your views anonymously making fun in Photoshop of political leaders you dislike? I don’t know, I would rather say yes. In Soviet Union, many writers expressed their opinions about the communist government indirectly, figuratively mocked at it. Many satirists wrote funny stories with stupid, fake and shallow bureaucrats as the main characters. And many political jokes circulated among the general public, especially during the times of perestroika. I heard a rather naïve but interesting view that those jokes contributed to the collapse of the empire of evil. Well, maybe there is some reason in this assumption. If it was really so, then maybe political jokes, anecdotes and collages could fuel people’s will for change within Belarusian society.
A few months ago, some anonymous pranksters have launched a website that would collect Photoshop artwork on the topic of Belarusian politics. (more…)
Alexander Kazulin, a presidential hopeful supported by Belarusian Social Democratic Party Narodnaja Hramada, offered cooperation to Alexander Milinkevich, the leader of Belarusian democratic forces. He proposed joint observation during the elections, unification of teams if any of two candidates fail the registration at CEC.
This offer sounds a bit strange, as just a few days back on RFE\RL internet forum Kazulin accused Milinkevich of being a pro-American candidate. His whole forum rhetoric, at least in my reading, seemed quite arrogant toward his oppositional rival.
Some Belarusian bloggers regard this as just a mere PR stunt and there would not be any real cooperation between the two. However, I would like to believe Milinkevich and Kazulin will reach an agreement. If they do, it may add some optimism to Belarusian pro-democratic electorate. Optimism and will for victory are necessary components for any campaign to succeed.
Milinkevich’s HQ has not yet reacted to Kazulin’s offer.
Zianon Pazniak, the leader of Christian Conservative Party Belarusian Popular Front, announced today that his initiative group would not submit signature lists to the Electoral Commissions. Hence Pazniak would not be on the slate list but would continue campaigning for his own alternative to the official elections, a Popular Vote. This initiative is explained in English on a website, created to promote the plan.
However, both main oppositional rivals, Milinkevich and Kazulin, had both stated their rejection of Popular Vote, as inefficient and not aimed at unification of the opposition but rather at its disorientation.
So at this point with Pazniak and Vajtovich out of the game, Milinkevich, Kazulin, Fralou, Hajdukevich, and Lukashenka are most probably going to compete for registration as presidential candidates at CEC once they submit their signature lists. A deadline for that is actually tomorrow.
During today’s session of PACE when Alaxandar Milinkevich was giving his keynote speech, a Russian controversial politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, known for his nationalistic views, cried out to Belarusian opposition leader, “Speak Russian, not French!”
Mr. Zhirinovsky, I am sure, had an opportunity to listen to the translation of Milinkevich’s address, which included a very detailed description of the current Belarusian political situation. Unfortunately, transcript of his speech is not yet available in English. But for all of you, including Mr. Zhirinovsky, who can read Russian, there it is in the language of Dostoyevsky and Putin:
The United States has welcomed a decision by Belarus to invite international observers to monitor elections in March, but a U.S. official also urged Belarus to stop harassing human-rights workers in the country.
The OSCE will send a team of election experts to Belarus next week for a preliminary inspection of conditions for the 19 March presidential election.
Today I met two Chinese visiting scholars to UNC. I learnt from them that satellite dishes were forbidden in China. And also tonight a Fulbrighter from Uzbekistan shared that internet access via satellite was banned in his home country. I guess it does make Belarus seem a bit freer if compared to those nations, doesn’t it?
We do can buy satellite dishes. Before coming to the United States, I had owned three and could watch hundreds of channels with no objections from the authorities. I could even pay some 50 bucks a month and have a high speed satellite internet access. Now there are a lot of rumors about Lukashenka’s possible plans to establish a harsher control of the internet. Well, for him this would seem rather logical as the web remains the only domain where opposition is clearly in the lead. Absolute majority of informational websites provide many-sided coverage of the events or clearly reflect viewpoints of Belarusian opposition. But with a small percentage of people having access to the internet, this information remains a privilege of the techie few, mostly young and educated residents of the capital. As for the print media, almost all independent newspapers are on the verge of survival. Thrown out of the state-monopoly distribution system, Belarus’ free media are currently working hard to find ways to their readers. And it is damn hard.
Well, here are a few links that may shed some light on this issue:
In September, 2005, I launched my first blog. It was in Belarusian and still is available here. In it I have been touching upon all sorts of topics that interested me: politics, music, movies, traveling. Basically, I wanted to help my friends keep up with me while I studied in the United States.
But as time passed on, I understood that Belarusian blogosphere, being diverse and vivid enough in both official languages of the country, was rather scarce in English. And now with the presidential elections just behind the corner, by setting up this web log, I want to share my outlook on the current events in my home country. Apart from that, I will be providing some links to interesting articles about Belarus, maybe also some political satire, and who knows what’s more gonna hit that mind 
. All right, so here we go. Belarus’ elections are scheduled for March, 19. Just a few steps back. Will it be a revolution or another “stainless victory” of the incumbent? Let us keep an eye on it together.
