DEMOCRACY. The situation in Belarus is one of cheating in the election, of violent replies to demonstrations by the government and removal of access to the internet. How did it come to this?
This text was published in cooperation with cooperative Kunlabori
The country had been taken over at times and after Russia had its revolution after world war one it had was somewhat independent during German influence by the Brest-Litovsk treaty 1918, before some turmoil, and then the Soviet Union seized the area. By the end of the second world war, half of the population had been either killed or moved – this cannot be said of any other European country according to Timothy Snyder and his book “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin 2010”.
Nazi Germany implemented “the Lebensraum policy” there and Stalin fought the nazis back on this territory. The Soviet Union rebuilt and used the area for manufacturing. Then Chernobyl occurred 1986 which affected Belarus more than Ukraine. On July 27 1990, Belarus became independent but still had the authoritarian political structures left from the Soviet Union.
Since 1994 Lukashenko has been the president of the country by fraudulent elections. The country is not in the EU and has problems with corruption in elections, human right violations and more according to the OSCE. A side note important to add is that democracy generally in the world is on a trend pointing down according to Varieties of Democracy – and the coronavirus situation is just making the trend even steeper (and a more efficient and less corrupt variety of democracy can absolutely be a possible solution).
We interviewed a Belarusian about the situation, and they told us that they have to use a VPN during the day to be able to communicate with us. The actual demonstrations are violent and there can be violent consequences for demonstrating. The people of Belarus are tired of government, and tired of offices that are always corrupt. We asked them if they knew about liquid democracy, which they did not.
The text ”Liquid Democracy, the solution to the Belarusian problem” by an anonymous Belarusian by the alias ”a patriotic Belarusian” has been spread on various media (VK and Telegram for example). The texts explain that Belarusians are tired of this old system that is corrupt and that they, therefore, should get rid of it – changing it into blockchain integrated online liquid democracy, to do the opposite of Lukashenko and spread means of accessing the world digitally. The full text in Russian can be found at the end of the article.
Now, it seems awareness of liquid democracy is not very large. Still, it has started to spread in Belarus between Belarusians during these times when government, politicians and the old structures are tiresome, and the people want something totally new. Hopefully, we will get a result that is as democratic as possible.
