Lukashenka’s pre-sale preparation

The Belarusian dictator hired another lord to spruce up is image. A new candidate to save the country’s reputation has been introduced to public.

The rescuer bears an impressive name of Peter Selwyn Gummer, Baron Chadlington, the head of Huntsworth, a public relations group. He appeared to Belarusian TV audience and said he would help the Belarusian government with privatization campaign. In other words, Belarus will be represented in the West as heaven for investors, and collapsing enterprises as promising, “Novaya Gazeta” writes.

Lord Chadlington is the second lord employed by Lukashenka. The previous one, Lord Timothy Bell, head of Bell Pottinger Group, spent a year improving Lukashenka’s image in the West and trying to deprive his of a title of “the last dictator of Europe” and replace it with “second to last dictator” or “the last but not the least”. A contract was cancelled a year later.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka hired the first lord on the recommendation of Boris Berezovsky. He told in public: “My friend Tim Bell will improve the image of Belarus in the West!” Bell confessed the contract with Lukashenka would bring him millions, but didn’t say the exact sum. No one had doubts it would be “millions”. Information on which budget item provided for expenses on the lord didn’t go public.

Having signed the contract in summer 2008, some months before the parliamentary elections, Lord Bell made an optimistic statement: “The parliamentary elections are of first importance. We need the international community to recognize them honest and fair.” The elections were carried out, the international community said they were fraudulent and their results illegitimate. Lord Bell promised Alyaksandr Lukashenka: “I’ll send a crowd of western journalists to you, you’ll be on pages of most influential papers!” The promise was fulfilled, the Financial Times correspondent arrived in Minsk to interview Lukashenka. But the article had a title “‘Last dictator’ caught between east and west”. The article repeated what had already been said by other western journalists, who don’t know Lord Bell. Similar things were shown in a recent NTV documentary “Godbatka”.

Lord Bell sent press-releases to European newspapers saying, for example, that the new law on mass media will ban censorship and free media will secure democratic rights of the people of Belarus. Taking into account that press release recipients had already written about the new law (which eliminates the Internet against a background of almost full absence of independent media in Belarus), the mailout made them laugh: he works for his money, so he is talking this nonsense.

Lord Bell’s latest dream was to represent Lukashenka in the West as a great friend of the Jews. If Lord meant that “Israeli people are by quarter our former people”, he is absolutely right. But when it concerns close governmental ties, this is malarkey. After Lukashenka’s numerous remarks, such as “If you have ever been to Babruisk, you must have seen what the town looked like. It was terrible! A real pig house! And that was mostly a Jewish town. You know how Jews treat the places where they live.”, Israeli leaders urged the world to struggle against new anti-Semitism. They meant not bin Laden. Only a blind deaf-mute sea captain can regard Lukashenka as a tolerant boy. There are only a few of them in the world, so the project failed.

Lord Bell was kicked out from Belarus last summer. Medical workers and teacher could hope the budget resources won’t be spent on foreign lords. But they were wrong. New Lord Chadlington seems to occupy his predecessor’s position for a long time. However, he doesn’t repeat Lord Bell’s mistakes and doesn’t declare Alyaksandr Lukashenka will be accepted by Her Majesty and be raised to the peerage tomorrow. He just says he will help the state with privatization. In means he will lie to Europe that today’s Belarus is a very prospective country for western investors, and democrat, liberal, and children’s great friend Lukashenka is the world’s best guarantor of investments safety, that nobody can make an investor build ice rinks and back collective farms.

I believe that this is not for long. Lord Chadlington is known for his loud resignation from his post of Chairman of the Royal Opera House in 1997 for incompetence and making it bankrupt for two years. Even governmental grants couldn’t save the company under Chadlington’s management from failure. So, welcome to Belarus, my lord! We have a few not yet ruined enterprises for you.