Alexander Lukashenko - greatest leader in the world today

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Belarus is the one former Soviet republic that is not under the control of a criminal mafia, it is the one place where the productive assets were not looted and stripped down and sold at fire sale prices. Belarus is an island of sanity in a sea of insanity in the region. It is also one of the most equal societies on earth. President Lukashenko was reelected recently with 80% of the vote - and with an unemployment rate of between 1%-2% (clearly he does not believe in the NAIRU) and without the sort of insane internal devaluation policies ravaging neighbouring Latvia (where the economy shrank by over 25%), one can easily understand why he won such a percentage. I think he may be the greatest leader on Earth today, I wonder if Belarus would have pulled off this feat without him.

The neighboring countries must be run by Republicans.

Is not Lukashenk a semi-reformed Communist.? I believe he is still closely allied to Vladimir Putin. I have heard that Belorus or Belarus is still Soviet in structure. Now, I may be wrong. Or have heard misinformation. I think the fall of other economies is not due to capitalism being wrong, but due to nation's taking up the theory that debt equals wealth. The US financiers schemed up a theory that you can borrow your way to wealth. It is destroying much f the world's economies. Until recently, capitalists used to believe that savings made you rich.
Perhaps Belarus is better off because they eschewed debt? And they cooperate with Russia, which while corrupt, still has resources and power. I may not agree with Lukashenko's semi-Communism, I am sure he is smart.

Well, up until 2006 I would have argued that the greatest leader in the world was Taufa'ahau Tupou IV, but I am not sure that the current King of Tonga is quite so corpulent.

As for Lukashenko, I have a hard time accepting a self-styled "authoritarian," who has amended away constitutional impediments to his remaining in office as a "great" leader. A great leader is one who can peacefully pass power on to a successor. Lukashenko is, lamentably, untested in that.

Lukashenko winning with 80% is impressive but what happens to you when you support the opposition again? Intimidation, imprisonment, torture, and possibly death?

I'm sure you think Hitler was the greatest leader ever too.

Jacoby, you know that all Soviet Socialists are supposed to hate Htler. I am sure xenon13 must hate Hitler. While the goals of Soviet Socialism and Hitlerian National Socialism are the same, the philosophy is different on a key point. Soviets claim to love the poor so they command them and make them obey. Hitlerians claim to love the Aryan poor and lead them on ambitious campaigns.
While, he is authoritarian, I doubt Lukashenko wastes time attempting to create a Belorussian master race and invade Poland and Russia. I agree that the election was probably fixed by the Worker's Party. However, Lukashenko is probably popular since he has avoided the "debt is wealth" scam perpetrated by Wall Street.

Belarus has good results. So outsiders want to topple Lukashenko so they can turn it into Latvia. By the way, visitors to Belarus notice the lack of a heavy police presence in this supposed police state.

Ive always heard that Belarus was the last of the old soviet style ( or any style) dictactorships in Euroope.

Although Putin era Russia has slid back to authoritarianism even its not quite the fossil belarus is.

Nobody wins an election by 80 percent without it being rigged ( unless he was running against Alan Keyes). Hes a dictator pure and simple.

If he still runs a soviet style command economy (no private enterprise) it might well work to insultate Belerus from both the global recession and from the problems of post-communism in the rest of the former soviet union-but at a price. The price being having a backward low standard of living compared to the rest of europe.

In the short run that might be a good thing. A backward country-but no unemployment-stable.
In the long run Belarus may end up as a well off as North Korea is now.

Xenon 13', I do not believe everything I hear about Belarus. Is it perhaps true that the reason for light police presence is that Lukashenko is talented at keeping them satisfied. I have hear that while he is authoritarian, he is not known to be cruel. Perhaps, he controls all information? He seems to be good at keeping people content.
Naturalpastic, though I am no fan of Soviet socialism. I do not think that Lukashenko has the megalomania of Kim Jong Il. He is a quiet dictator. Belarus probably has some market economics. I have heard they allow private farming.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmNdtzxDZ4k[/youtube]

Belarus get a lot of hostile media from Poland and also from Russia that promotes the other side. Unfortunately for them the opposition is inept. One of them is a hard-core Ayn Rand person! Is this what's going to encourage people to find someone other than Lukashenko? Once they tried to find themselves a Kostunica and that was an old-style Communist Party apparachik and Lukashenko said "you won't pull a Kostunica on me" and they didn't. The funny thing is that in those days, the U.S. officially recognised the "13th Supreme Soviet" as the legitimate rulers of Belarus.

Kostunica was that Serbian nationalist they found to lead the "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" ticket which was populated and run by people who supported the NATO bombing of 1999. Kostunica had his hands clean and was "pure" so to speak - a nationalist who never had touched power and didn't have to make compromises and always complained behind the scenes when Milosevic was forced into them by Western pressure. Naturally as soon as his lot took over he surrendered on every last point to the west! The problem was that in Serbia there was this idea among many nationalists that Serbia's problem was failure to commit itself to the Western camp with economic pillage and the rest of it, and as a result of their failure to do these things the West attacked it and helped its rivals gain at its expense. Their argument was that if the West got everything it wanted from Serbia, Serbia would get assistance against its rivals. That's what Kostunica was really hinting at and of course he was proven to be dead wrong, particularly when the West officially endorsed alleged Kosovo independence under the leadership of organ traffickers.

The circumstances in Serbia permitted this approach to work - the whole Chetnik-Partisan divide and this idea in the Serbian nationalist camp that the US really would love Serbia if Serbia did what it wanted because Serbia is qualitatively preferred over particularly its Muslim rivals. The approach for Belarus was to find someone who would not be an obvious American client, someone who is conservative on the Belarus scene and would appeal to pro-Soviet nostalgia with one segment of the population whilst the pro-western reformers would rally under its banner separately just as Djindjic's people did during the 2000 coup in Serbia. This Soviet person was found and found wanting because there wasn't the pressure or the divisions there was in Serbia and Lukashenko had not been forced into unpopular compromises as Milosevic did and he was met with suspicion by the large pro-Chetnik part of the population who saw him as a partisan and thus not trustworthy.

This coloured revolution attempt failed a bit like the Bay of Pigs failed after the successful prototype operation in 1954 Guatemala. The new colour revolutions succeeded using a different paradigm - in both of the next cases, US clients had been running the places in question, and in both cases they were ageing and were spent, and in both cases the US decided to sponsor a "new generation" of "reformers" closer to it and its ways and decided to get rid of their spent clients. In each case, the spent clients turned to Russia to help stay in power. This was Georgia and Ukraine. By the way, Saakashvili's 2004 election was accepted by the OSCE despite his allegedly winning 96% of the vote.

Xenon13", I am willing to consider that US media is hostile to Lukashenko and his record is distorted. I have heard that he is on good terms to Putinist Russia. Is that a lie? Has Lukashenko in fact opposed Russia.? I am willing to consider the idea that our info on Lukashenko is wrong.
On reason I may believe is that he was smart enough to avoid Wall Street's schemes.

Lukashenko's relations with Russia are complicated. He wanted to establish a common state and the Union of Belarus and Russia was created but it doesn't really amount to much. The Russians want effectively to dismantle Belarus' economic model which Lukashenko won't allow. The most that there is really is a military alliance. It's believed that Lukashenko hoped to use the common state to take over Russia particularly when Yeltsin was ailing and Lukashenko's successes made him very popular in Russia. Right now, Putin has become more personally popular in the region but Lukashenko I think has done a better job delivering the results but Russia is seen as a way to keep the western powers and their economic ideas out.

Xenon13, I do not believe that there is nothing wrong with a free market or real capitalism. The problem is that the west doesn't really practice real capitalism either. While the goal of a person is supposed to save money to get wealthier. The US and other western nations have plenty of taxes and bureaucrats. The Wall Street crowd has peddled a scheme to get investors to buy bad debt, real estate default swaps, and derivatives. It was part of the "debt is wealth" scheme. Whatever hus motives, Lukashenko seems to have avoided this.
I am trying to be open minded. Perhaps our info is wrong on Lukashenko or perhaps he is wrong. By the way, what does Poland have against Lukashenko? Territorial issue or natural gas/oil issues? What is his relations with Ukraine?