In what is only their second presidential election, the citizens of Belarus are preparing to file off to the polling stations and decide whether President Alexander Lukashenko is to remain in power or be replaced, presumably by opposition figure and trade union leader Vladimir Goncharik.

This year has been unusually scandalous in the scandal-rocked C.I.S. First, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma was accused of authorizing the murder of opposition journalist Georgy Gongadze. Now, his Belarusian counterpart is under assault by allegations that he is, to put it bluntly, a murderer who has given his seal of approval to so-called "death squads" bequeathed with the task of doing away with political opponents in a most unpleasant manner.

This has prompted U.S. Ambassador to Belarus Michael Kozak to say that America's policy in Belarus was now the same as it had been in Nicaragua – to topple the government by funding opposition forces.

The Belarusian government counters that the charges are nothing but Western propaganda designed to undermine his regime. This is certainly possible – Western intervention in other countries' political processes is hardly unheard-of and sometimes even avowed, as the above-mentioned comment indicates. But given Belarus' track record, opposition claims are more than a little plausible.

The fact of the matter is, of course, that Lukashenko is a popular political figure in his country and would more than likely trump his opposition even if he did not have control of the main sources of information and engage in underhanded methods. This is what makes his pre-election behavior seem particularly strange.

Nowhere is the authoritarian nature and apparent irrationality of the Lukashenko regime more clearly on display than in its preparations for what might transpire immediately after the elections. It is odd for a leader of a supposedly democratic country to issue threats to his opponents and undertake military exercises with the express intent of preparing to crush post-election civil unrest.

For a man who should be sure of his re-election based on sheer popularity, Lukashenko seems bizarrely concerned. Barring the rather far-fetched possibility that opposition figures are preparing to take to the hills and turn into full-fledged anti-Lukashenko partisans, it seems unlikely that the tanks and aircraft mobilized for recent riot-control exercises could be necessary.

Still, it should be mentioned that the citizens of Belarus are by and large not idiots, and that some of Lukashenko's supporters, especially in the countryside, have very good reasons for wanting him to remain in power – namely, that in Belarus, as opposed to any of the other C.I.S. states, wages and pensions are paid regularly and on time. The West should not reflexively assume, as it so often does, that a loss by its preferred candidate automatically signifies a failure for democracy.

There is more than a slight whiff of hypocrisy in U.S. condemnation of the regime in power in Minsk, especially considering Washington's blithe disregard for blatant election tampering elsewhere; the reported use of governmentally approved death squads in the U.S. financial beneficiary of Colombia; and its effort to undermine the Sandinista government.

But allegations that one of Lukashenko's preferred political tools happens to be murder, as well as his recent behavior, do call for deep skepticism about his worthiness to lead the people of Belarus.