Democracy is under attack in some countries, but recent events in Russia and Belarus provide lessons for accountable governance globally.
While Aleksei Navalny, 44, Russia’s best-known democracy and anti-corruption advocate, was struggling for his life in a coma in a Siberian hospital after a suspected poisoning, President Vladimir Putin followed his ongoing practice of refusing to voice the opposition leader’s name.
Navalny threatens Putin’s regime because he stands for a peaceful, democratic Russia and is principled, selfless, courageous and charismatic.
European political leaders reacted promptly to Navalny’s critical situation, especially when local officials tried to obstruct his evacuation to Germany.
A blogger, Navalny has deployed myriad Internet projects to discredit Putin’s use of television stations he seized for propaganda purposes from 2000 on. In 2007, Navalny sought to build a pro-democracy coalition of liberals and nationalists.
Historian Robert Horvath said that Navalny exposed the methods used by corrupt officials “to embezzle billions of dollars from state-controlled corporations.”
He challenged Russia’s authoritarian system and its heavily manipulated elections to legitimize Putin’s rule. His proposal to vote for anyone but Putin’s United Russia party in the 2011 elections exposed massive electoral fraud and precipitated huge protests.
Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has kept a YouTube spotlight on offshore assets and kleptocrats’ lifestyles. One video released in 2017 on the palaces, estates and yachts of then-Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev was viewed 35 million times and caused nationwide protests.
In 2013, released from jail to compete in Moscow’s mayoral election, Navalny, despite being smeared by the Kremlin-aligned media, won 27 percent of the vote.
His presidential ambitions were thwarted by his 2013 criminal conviction on fabricated charges, but he has used his national network of activists to promote a strategy of “intelligent voting” — voting for candidates with the best chance of defeating the ruling party.
One notable success in last year’s regional elections was in Khabarovsk — now a hotbed of anti-Kremlin protest.
Horvath said that the world should recognize Navalny as the embodiment of the possibility of a peaceful, democratic Russia that is a partner, not an adversary, of the West.
Navalny opposed the war with Ukraine, saying that Putin’s overriding motive was not concern for compatriots, but fear of the contagion of anti-authoritarian revolution.
By exposing the hypocrisy of the Kremlin’s anti-Western propagandists, Navalny reflects Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov’s insight regarding the connection between respect for human rights and international peace. If a democratic Russia ever emerges from Putinism, Navalny would undoubtedly be honored as its prophet.
Putin’s counterpart in Belarus since 1994 is Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, re-elected on Aug. 9 in an election that many have denounced as fraudulent.
To achieve his landslide win, Lukashenko manipulated the parliament elected last year with not one opposition member.
One observer of the election last year said: “I will never forget the fear I saw in the eyes of our interlocutors.”
The results drove more than 200,000 Belarusians into the streets of Minsk in protest.
However, for protesting and requesting new elections, people are now being detained and tortured.
Lukashenko’s forces locked protesters and journalists in the Red Church. Food supplies from Poland to aid Belarusians were blocked. Two of the executive directors of opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya’s newly formed Coordination Council have been jailed. Opponents have been fired from their jobs and replaced.
“We’re not the opposition anymore. We’re the majority now,” said Tikhanovskaya, now exiled in Lithuania.
Vowing to “stand till the end” in protests over the disputed election and subsequent violence, she told the BBC that if the protest movement stepped back now, Belarusians would be “slaves.”
Democracies around the world must encourage Lukashenko to show respect for human dignity and peaceful demonstrations; free all political prisoners; cease torture of detainees and cease criminal proceedings against members of the Coordination Council; provide a new free and fair election with local and international observers; and create a new central election committee.
Some feel that Putin favors a new election in Belarus because he is tired of Lukashenko.
“Perhaps the world will help us, so that Lukashenko starts talking to us. For now, he’s only talking to Putin, so perhaps Putin will help us,” said Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Nobel Prize in Literature.
Meanwhile, Democratic governments for Russians and Belarusians remain over the horizon.
David Kilgour is a former Canadian lawmaker who served as Canadian secretary of state for Asia-Pacific from 2002 to 2003, and is an international patron of Hong Kong Watch.
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