When Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko stole an election last Dec. 19, followed by a violent crackdown against protesting citizens and the arrests of some 600 political prisoners, among them, five presidential candidates, you could hardly say that this was his first rodeo.  Lukashenko, though only 56, has enjoyed a stranglehold on power ever since he chucked out his predecessor on corruption charges and won an election in 1994, and has organized similar deficient elections in 2001 and 2006.  This time though it appears that he may be suffering the consequences of heightened expectations, as many were led to believe that Belarus would try opening up the system a little bit for a somewhat pluralistic experiment.  Then the opposite occurred.

Apart from Hugo Chavez’s warm embrace (and billions in Venezuelan oil) and the visibly reluctant tolerance from Moscow, Belarus is quickly losing friends.  Back on Dec. 23, the foreign ministers of Sweden, Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic published a stinging indictment of Lukashenko.  George W. Bush, bear with me, is reading the names of prisoners on RFE/RL’s Belarus service.  Navi Pillay at the UN put down a statement, while neighbors from the Netherlands to Lithuania are making their voices heard, especially after Lukashenko decided to close down the Minsk office of the OSCE.  Lukashenko was most recently added to the EU’s visa ban list – joining an unfortunate crowd of statesmen such as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe (at least he’s among friends).