Milinkevich in New York Times
Today’s New York Times carries an article about Alexander Milinkevich and our presidential “elections” that will take place in just 20 days. An American journalist Steven Lee Myers made a pretty good overview of the current political situation in the country. It’s a highly recommended reading for anybody who’s interested:
On March 19, Aleksandr Milinkevich will not be elected the next president of Belarus. He campaigns anyway, but with something else in mind. Through the winter he has traveled from city to city in clattering rented vans, meeting would-be voters in the bleak cold, gathering signatures and speaking about the social, economic and, above all, political neuroses that afflict this small nation at the eastern edge of a new Europe… …”It is impossible to win at the elections, because there are no elections,” Milinkevich told me the first time I met him in a dim, three-room apartment in Minsk in October. “Nobody counts the votes.” It was my first realization that a presidential campaign in Belarus, a former republic of the Soviet Union, operates with a logic outside any traditional notion of democracy. (Read the whole article)
February 26th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
P.S. The only problem is how they spell Belarusian. I’ve sent this e-mail to NYT:
To: letters@nytimes.com
CC: executive-editor@nytimes.com;
managing-editor@nytimes.com
Dear New York Times editors:
I’d like to make a comment about today’s article by Steven Lee Myers about Belarus’ elections. It’s incorrect to spell the adjective “Belarusian” with two SS’s (BelaruSSian). There’s no grammatical basis in English for doing that. Furthermore, Rus (Ruthenia) is not Russia, and Belarus means White Ruthenia (White Rus). The correct adjective in English is Belarusian, with one S. You can check English Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus or http://www.pravapis.org/ for further details. It is also worth noting that “Belarusian” (with one S) is the most popular and widespread spelling in English, according to Google search results.
Kind regards,
***
February 26th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
It was a good idea to send that note, indeed! If you could find addresses of their copy editors, this would be a fast track to mend their spell-checking.
As for the article itself, I liked it a lot. Yesterday I went to a small party with a couple of professors and graduate students. One of my instructors handed me this NYT piece. It was great to note how informed he was about our elections - primarily thanks to this article!
February 26th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Will there be a possibility to conduct exit polls?
February 27th, 2006 at 12:36 am
Probably it will be very difficult. “Partnerstva” which is one of the NGO’s that has experience in doing exit polls, is under fire from KGB. Four of its founders are in KGB jail, as we speak. This year taking opinion polls in Belarus became a dangerous business.
February 27th, 2006 at 12:50 am
RTR: http://www.partnerstva.org/eng/ - their website