Revolutions gone astray in
Eurasia By M K Bhadrakumar
March has been a fateful month for
"revolutions" in three former republics of the old
Soviet Union. The March 26 parliamentary election
in Ukraine was a pale reflection of the tumultuous
"Orange Revolution" of 2004; also this month a
revolution struggling to be born was aborted in
Belarus; and in the Central Asian republic of
Kyrgyzstan, people reflected sourly on a
revolution seemingly gone astray after one year.
The mystique of the "color revolutions" is
no longer sustainable. Revolutions can no longer
be staged against the seductive
backdrop of rock music and
feverish all-night partying. It turns out that
progress toward real democracy and prosperity is a
long slog. As The Economist pointed out recently,
"Revolutions need money; somebody paid for the
floodlights and free food in Kiev."
That
somebody included organizations close to the
administration of President George W Bush, who
himself has been the head cheerleader for
advancing democracy across the globe. But unlike
their active intervention in Ukraine in September
2004 and the behind-the-scenes support for the
"Tulip Revolution" in Kyrgyzstan in March 2005,
the Bush people chose not to get too involved the
election this March 19 in Belarus.
Bush
limited himself to a stirring address, reminding
the people of Belarus that this year was the 88th
anniversary of the first effort to establish an
independent Belarus. Washington thought some
mileage could be had by needling Moscow about the
incorporation of what was then known as
Byelorussia as a Soviet republic in 1918. At a
minimum, it helped take Washington's mind off sad
thoughts about the death of the Orange and Tulip
revolutions.
Bush was probably wise not to
get too close. President Alexander Lukashenko
didn't need to rig the election to win. Most
independent opinion polls (including "unfriendly"
ones like that of the Independent Institute of
Socio-Economic and Political Studies in Kiev) gave
Lukashenko a comfortable lead of about 55% in a
straight and fair election. He should have known
that nobody in a real democracy gets 82.6% of the
vote, but perhaps he didn't care.
Lukashenko is authoritarian but still very
popular. Says The Economist, "Unemployment is 1.5%
... other ex-Soviet republics are actually poorer
than they were under communism, while Belarus is
richer. The average wage last year rose to US$218
per month. Pensions have grown and are paid on
time."
Real wages have continually
increased in Belarus for the past several years;
inflation is under control; Lukashenko has halved
the number of people below the poverty line during
the past seven years. He followed policies that
gave Belarus the fairest distribution of incomes
of any country in the region. He preserved the
Soviet-era industrial complexes, the large
collective-farm agricultural system, and the
system of social support.
Compared with
neighboring Poland, where unemployment is soaring,
or Ukraine, where economic growth has plummeted
since the Orange Revolution, Belarus is an oasis
of stability. It was natural that the United
States failed to ignite revolutionary fervor in
Minsk. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a
statement on Tuesday, "What happened in Minsk was
a failed attempt to follow the opposition tactics
that were used in presidential elections in other
CIS countries", ie, members of the post-Soviet
Commonwealth of Independent States.
The
Guardian commented in the run-up to the Belarusian
election: "Europe and the US are pouring in money.
According to the New York Times, cash is being
smuggled from the National Endowment for
Democracy, Britain's Westminster Foundation, and
the German Foreign Ministry directly to Khopits, a
network of young anti-Lukashenko activists."
But as Dimitri Simes, president of the
Nixon Center in Washington, explained to the
Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, "Despite all
the flaws in the Belarusian political system, it's
clear that the criticism of Minsk isn't based on
its domestic policies, but on the fact that
Lukashenko isn't oriented toward cooperation with
the West and the US - not even as a formality.
He's more focused on an alliance with Russia.
"The US didn't back any particular
candidates in either Ukraine or Belarus. It's
clear that Ukraine's election won't produce any
kind of result that won't be acceptable to the US.
But this isn't just about fair elections, but a
matter of pushing Russia's influence out of the
region.
"Color revolutions succeed when
the authorities are not only authoritarian but
also lack self-confidence ... Until President
Lukashenko loses popularity in Belarus, I don't
think his regime will have any serious problems,"
said Simes.
The Looters'
Revolution March 24 was the first
anniversary of the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan.
It marked the day that ex-president Askar Akayev
fled the country to Moscow; he resigned a few days
later, to be succeeded ultimately by President
Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The new president decreed that
March 24 be celebrated as the "Day of the Triumph
of Justice", but large sections of population
preferred to remember it as "Looters' Day" - a
sign of how things have soured for the Kyrgyz
people in the past year.
This change of
power was another supposed triumph for Bush's
democracy project, yet he was uncertain as to what
kind of anniversary felicitations he should send
to his counterpart in the Kyrgyz capital of
Bishkek. The Americans in the embassy there must
have informed him that there was great confusion
in the Kyrgyz minds over whether the events of a
year ago made their country better or worse.
Clearly, Bakiyev's government was thinking
positively. On the eve of the anniversary, Prime
Minister Felix Kulov wrote to the International
Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, which
jointly manage the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries
Initiative (HIPC), that Kyrgyzstan was ready to
join. Kyrgyzstan wouldn't be able to pay back any
more of its foreign debt, which exceeds $2 billion
(equivalent to 80% of its current gross domestic
product, or GDP). It takes Washington's support
for admission to the privileged circle of the
HIPC, thus becoming eligible for a debt writeoff.
Only 28 countries have been admitted so far - 24
from Africa.
The Kyrgyz economic crisis is
at least partly a legacy of the Tulip Revolution.
The overall situation facing Kyrgyzstan is indeed
daunting - political instability (including
criminalization of politics), ethnic tensions,
clan struggles, drug trafficking, Islamic
militancy, extreme poverty and unemployment.
Akayev, the deposed Kyrgyz leader, starkly
reminded everyone last week: "The threat of the
country's collapse is not unreal. A national
catastrophe awaits us."
Half of
Kyrgyzstan's national income today comes from
remittances by the migrant laborers working in
Russia. They contribute about $200 million
annually. This is augmented by the annual rent
that Bishkek lately sought for the use of Manas
Airbase by US forces. No matter what happened to
the Tulip revolution, Bishkek has signaled its
desire for long-term engagement with Washington.
The Bush administration must hold itself
accountable for much of the chaos left behind by
the Tulip Revolution. Follow-through or
nation-building may not figure highly in US
foreign policy, but in Kyrgyzstan's case, an
exception is needed. That may eventually help
Washington to evolve a Central Asia policy that is
intrinsic to the region's needs and worthy of a
global power.
Orange
peelings Sunday's election in Ukraine
brought the many contradictions into sharp focus.
The Our Ukraine Party of President Victor
Yushchenko, hero of the Orange Revolution and
darling of American democrats, lost heavily in the
voting for parliament despite strong US backing.
His party pulled in barely 15% of votes. Yet he
emerges as the power broker, since neither of the
two top performers, his old nemesis from 2004
Viktor Yanukovich and ex-prime minister Yulia
Timoshenko, can form a majority coalition without
Yushchenko.
Yushchenko views his erstwhile
Orange Revolution ally Timoshenko with deep
distaste, believing she harbors ambitions to
replace him as president. Yet he may have no
choice but to realign with her, pinning hopes that
the coalition may not last. On the other hand,
despite his "pro-Kremlin" image, Yanukovich is
keen to link up with Yushchenko. Yanukovich said:
"We are ready to work with all ... there is no
compromise we will turn down."
The US at
some point might actually encourage a
Yushchenko-Yanukovich coalition - provided
Yushchenko maintained his anti-Russia stance (over
natural gas, Black Sea bases, use of the Russian
language, blockade of Trans-Dneister, etc) and
provided, of course, that Yanukovich moderated his
opposition to Ukraine's North Atlantic Treaty
Organization membership. (Two-thirds of Ukraine's
people oppose NATO membership.)
It would
not prove difficult for Yanukovich to fulfill
these "conditions" to receive Washington's
blessing either, since everything ultimately would
depend on the wishes of the big business interests
backing him, especially the billionaire kingmaker
of Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov.
Entrenched
business groups manipulate all three top political
figures - fiery revolutionaries such as Yushchenko
and Timoshenko, and Yanukovich alike. As in
Kyrgyzstan, "revolution" simply resulted in a
reshuffling of mafia clans manipulating the
politicians in power. (Ironically, in his
felicitation message to Bakiyev last Friday,
Yushchenko wrote that the "ideals for which the
Kyrgyz people struggled correspond with the ones
of [the] Orange Revolution in Ukraine".)
The calculus of power remains the same.
Economic plunder continues to bleed Ukraine white.
GDP growth declined from 12% in 2004 to 2.5% in
2005. The results of Sunday's election show that
the people's disillusion has followed the same
downward curve.
Moscow remains uninvolved
and impassive. It has learned to play by the
rulebook of Bush's revolutions. Moscow didn't even
make an issue of Yushchenko's crude attempt to
disfranchise hundreds of thousands of
ethnic-Russian voters (Yanukovich's support base)
by simply changing the voters' names from the
Russian language into Ukrainian - an ethnic
Russian would be puzzled to see his name Skvorsotv
figuring as Shpakov in the voters list.
As
for the impressive election campaign of the
"pro-Kremlin" Viktor Yanukovich, full credit goes
to the savvy US public relations firm that he
hired, which had an impressive record of
catapulting to the White House two US politicians
- Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. Not
surprisingly, the Russian Foreign Ministry has
already offered to deal with any new government in
Kiev on the basis of the "principles of equality,
friendship, pragmatism and mutually beneficial
cooperation". What happened in Ukraine?
The biggest potential "revolution" comes
next year, when Russians go to the polls to elect
a president. But if the Bush people thought these
color revolutions were merely dress rehearsals for
the main event, they might be mistaken. There can
be half a dozen different ways that the Kremlin
may approach the transition in 2007, but the
bottom line is that it will not bend down to a
noisy revolution.
M K Bhadrakumar
is a former Indian career diplomat who has
served in Islamabad, Kabul, Tashkent and Moscow.
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