This is the beginning of a new phase. It happened in Minsk on Saturday, when the Belarusian president went to the prison of his secret services to meet with opposition figures held there for weeks or months, but question: how to interpret this scene?
First hypothesis: Alexander Lukashenko feels so weakened by the persistence of the protest that this is why he resolved, on Saturday, to begin discussions with his opponents. The fact is that in front of him were, among others, the leading lady of the “Coordination Council” (the leadership that the opposition has equipped itself since the summer) and most importantly, Viktor Babaryko, the man who had emerged as Lukashenko’s main competitor in the presidential election of August 9 but whom Lukashenko had had arrested in June for fear that he might win the election.
In the presence of the “old opposition” and the new one, the one born from the street demonstrations against the rigging of the election results, it looked a lot like the opening of negotiations, only it was Alexander Lukashenko alone who had decided on the time and place of this meeting. He was the chief guardian, he was the master of it. The others were only inmates on their way back to their cells, so we can also read this scene in a very different way.
Quite the opposite way, actually: the self-proclaimed re-elected outgoing president now feels strong enough to come and tell his prisoners that all they would have to do is to accept his proposal for constitutional reform, that by doing so they could find a role to play and regain their freedom, and that it was up to them to take this chance or leave it.
The exchange lasted four and a half hours, the presidency said, but which reading to choose?
Answer: a third one, made up of the first two at the same time, because the fact is, first of all, that street protests last but eventually erode under the violence of repression. In this sense, Alexander Lukashenko manages to survive himself, but he cannot regain control in a country that rejects him and whose economy is collapsing unless he offers a prospect of change. This he can only achieve by involving the opposition in the constitutional reform, the outlines of which he has yet to specify.
His opponents are his prisoners, but without them he can do nothing, and that is where the correct reading of this scene lies.
To his interlocutors, Alexander Lukashenko is said to have told that it was necessary to “look at things from a broader perspective” and that “the Constitution will not be written in the street”. This is what his services indicate, adding that “by decision of the participants, the content of the discussion is kept secret”. You don’t need to have been under the table to understand that this threatened president is trying to drive a wedge between the two oppositions, the one he has forced into exile and the one he keeps in the KGB prison, but the major element is that this man has gone to ask for help from prisoners, from his own prisoners, whom he has just officially made into what they are: political prisoners.
The new phase that opened on Saturday in Minsk is a political phase during which repression, of course, continues.
Alexander Lukashenko will try to regain the credibility without which Vladimir Putin will abandon him. Opponents will have to choose between accepting or refusing to go a few yards with him. A lot will depend on the conditions under which they could be released since it is hard to imagine that negotiations really begin between a chief guard and his prisoners.
In other words, nothing is achieved, but the certainty is that between Lukashenko, the different currents of the opposition and this unavoidable player in the shadows that is Vladimir Putin, people will be needed more than ever to shuttle back and forth, to test the offers and move things forward.
This is why several of the MEPs are promoting the idea of setting up a “good offices” delegation, mandated by the European Parliament and composed of three former heads of state or government. We are a small group that has been actively working on this for a month and last Saturday’s first talks are prompting us to redouble our efforts.
