Show trial in Minsk a joke

The trail against Andrzej Poczobut, the correspondent for the Polish liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza, started in Belarus on Tuesday. Poczobut had called President Alexander Lukashenko a dictator and accused him of committing electoral fraud. Lukashenko will come out the loser regardless of the outcome, the paper writes: "Even if Poczobut is condemned on three counts, Lukashenko won't be able to convince anyone that he's no dictator. On the contrary: it would only make the world more sure of it. ... Nevertheless the fact that someone is calling him a dictator and electoral fraudster shouldn't worry him too much at present because he's got a much bigger problem than that on his hands. Namely that his economic leadership based on the Sovkhoz system [of large state-owned enterprises] has led the country to the brink of disaster."

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