While the New York Times has treated the lopsided outcome of Belarus presidential election as confirmation of the allegations of the US-backed candidate Aleksandr Milinkevich that the vote was rigged, major media outlets have ignored their own previous reporting that predicted the incumbent, Aleksandr Lukashenko, was by far the most popular candidate and would likely score an overwhelming electoral victory.
A September 25, 2005 Los Angeles Times report said that, “even [Lukashenko’s] fiercest opponents don’t question the accuracy of independent polls that rate him the most popular politician in this country.”
An InterMedia poll reported on by the Los Angeles Times on March 19, and a Gallup/Baltic Surveys poll, cited by the Times of London on March 10, predicted an overwhelming Lukashenko win.
Major media outlets have since ignored their own reporting, to echo the charges of opposition forces.
These opposition forces have openly worked with Washington to oust Lukashenko, who runs an economically nationalist government that resists privatization, imposes conditions on foreign investment, and nurtures domestic industry behind tariff walls, while presiding over the region’s lowest unemployment rate, highest rate of economic growth, and flattest distribution of income.
The people are doing well, but the economy, from the point of view of Western investors and transnational corporations, is not.
That’s why the United States, Britain and Germany have worked with forces within Belarus opposed to the government’s economic policies, to bring down Lukashenko and replace him with a pro-Western regime that will sell off profitable state-owned enterprises and open the country to penetration by Western capital and exports, on terms favorable to Western corporations.
According to an April 22, 2005 New York Times report, Condoleezza Rice met Lukashenko’s opponents in Lithuania on April 21, where they discussed the use of “mass pressure for change.”
“Rice’s meeting,” the report went on, “appeared to be aimed at preparing opposition officials for the elections, which Rice said would be an ‘excellent opportunity’ to challenge the government.”
This is consistent with the view that Lukashenko’s popularity was recognized as a barrier to change, and that the opposition, under Washington’s guidance, developed plans to use extra-electoral means to force the incumbent to step down.
Election coverage in the early part of the campaign pointed out that opposition forces were doing little to contest the election, and were preparing instead for an insurrection. (The election would act as the context, and a trumped up charge of electoral fraud, as the pretext.)
The New York Times reported on January 1 that “Mr. Lukashenko’s opponents seem not to be running an election campaign, as much as they are trying to organize an uprising,” and on February 26 reported that Milinkevich “is campaigning not for the presidency but for an uprising.”
While the outcome of the election appears to be suspiciously lopsided (Lukashenko took 83 percent of the vote to only six percent for Milinkevich) on February 26, the New York Times reported that “the results of a poll, paid for by the [International Republican Institute]…showed the ratings of Milinkevich and other opposition leaders in the single digits.”
Inasmuch as the New York Times reported that the poll was done for the Milinkevich campaign, which was being advised by Terry Nelson, the national political director for the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign, the lopsided Lukashenko electoral victory was surely anticipated, and should have been known by the New York Times to be a possible (indeed, the probable) legitimate outcome of the election.
Instead, the newspaper has followed the script adhered to by other major media outlets of echoing the allegations of the US-backed opposition forces, offering not a shred of evidence that the allegations are true.
Full article: http://gowans.blogspot.com/
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