This lady oversaw the 2010 elections, which Lukashenko won with almost 80 percent of the vote. Some of that staggering landslide was probably due to the fact that both of the two largest opposition parties mysteriously pulled out of the election a week before the vote. Belarus responded with the largest protests ever, and the police responded by beating the everloving shit out of those protesters.

That was also the day we all learned that running for president was a fast track to prison. In the wake of the election, every major candidate besides Lukashenko found themselves in jail. That was actually one of the regime's more intelligent policies; using elections to push all their enemies out into the open, and then arresting them. Here's one of the major contenders in that election being carried away after the riot cops beat him senseless:

Julia Darashkevich/Reuters
Above: democracy!

After President Lukashenko was elected, he decided to change the national symbol to an ugly Christmas sweater.

And yet merriment is illegal.

Any display of the independence flag is punishable by ... well, whatever the cops feel like doing to you at the time. Hopefully they'll only tell you to remove it. But one guy was sentenced to two years in prison for his determination to fly the old flag.

Gazeta.ru
Then they stripped him to check for flag tattoos. No luck.

Why all the hatred for a harmless flag? Well, dictators have a vested interest in making people forget there was ever a time before their reign. One of the first things the Nazis did once they started assuming power was change the flags. That's how you spot a dictator: oppressive mustache, thousand-yard stare, and oddly design-obsessed.

There's a method behind all this madness, though: The basic uselessness of our unemployment benefits and the insane difficulty of registering for them means that our government can report an unemployment rate of one percent. The real number of unemployed people is much, much higher. But since they aren't registered, the government doesn't legally have to give a fuck.

VIKTOR DRACHEV/AFP/Getty Images
And the media gets to report on a great economy!
Also, the state owns the media.

But hiding the unemployment rate doesn't do anything for the utter lack of tax revenue from all those hidden unemployed people. To counter this, our tax minister, Sergei Nalivaichenko, instituted "sponger tax" of about $250 a year for all people who do not pay taxes for more than six months. This includes stay-at-home moms and housewives. When asked about housewives, the minister replied, "Well, their husbands earn enough to provide for their family. They'll manage." Then he stroked a white cat and laughed maniacally [citation needed].

This didn't stop people from protesting, of course. And when our national currency devalued by 300 percent in 2011, prompting an economic crisis, people took to the streets and voiced their displeasure with one mass slow clap. That's, like, the most passive resistance possible, right? No way the police went fuck-nuts crazy on--

Haha, of course they did! CLAPPING SHALL NOT BE TOLERATED.

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Clapping sarcastically gets extra punishment.

They brutally put down the demonstration. In a dictatorship, any display of solidarity and dissent by the people scares the authorities shitless. This extends to arresting a one-armed man for clapping, which at least answers one age-old question.

It's gotten to the point where no form of public dissent, no matter how mild, comes without a prison sentence. And if you've been arrested for organizing a protest before, you can expect to be arrested again before any major holiday or event, just in case. Oddly enough, that's a policy my dictator run amok shares with the British government. Even the top one percent aren't immune to this sort of thing; last year, the CEO of a Russian potash company tried to pull out of a trade agreement with Belarus, and he was arrested and held for ransom by the government.

NOT AGREEING TO TRADE SHALL NOT BE TOLERATED.

The president has a bastard son, Kolya, whom he takes with him everywhere. The boy is about 11 years old now. Ever since he was little, he has always been seen with the dictator, often wearing the same clothes as him, mini-me style. When there are meetings with military men, the president makes them salute the boy. Rumor goes that one time, when they were flying, Kolya wanted to close the door of the plane himself. He was told this was forbidden by a stewardess, and he bit her hand and shouted that he'd have her shot when he becomes a minister. He follows Lukashenko on state occasions, and was given a golden gun by then-Russian-President Medvedev as a present. He's never stopped wearing it since:

via Charter97.com
"Wouldn't a steel gun work better?"
"Yes, but it would also feel less evil."

There's no way this junior Bond villain in training taking over a whole country is going to end well.