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Lukashenko, Europe longest serving leader who was previously the director of a collective farm in Soviet Belarus, is presiding over a people assembly beginning Thursday to unveil political reforms he promised last year to calm the protests.The gathering of nearly 3,000 delegates in the capital Minsk comes six months into a resolute crackdown on critics sparked by the 66 year old Lukashenko claim to a sixth term in elections last August.The erratic leader was seen as clinging to power as he unleashed a brutal put down of the wave of unprecedented and spontaneous protests, which were seen as the most significant challenge to his 27 year rule.His government has hand picked the nearly 3,000 loyal delegates invited to the All Belarusian People Assembly, a hold over from the Soviet era, which has no legislative power or opposition representation.He has not given any indication what the reforms could be and instead made clear he intends to retain power, rebuffing calls from Western leaders and the opposition whose leaders have been exiled or jailed.”I will not suddenly give up the presidency,” Lukashenko said recently. “I have nothing other than Belarus. I cling to it and I hold on to it”.Lukashenko almost instinctively reverted last year to the use of brute force to crush the protests, in a response that left at least four dead, thousands detained and hundreds reporting torture in prison.The tactics were similar to how he put down the last large demonstrations against his rule, in 2010, when his unrepentant use of force reinforced his reputation as the overseer of “the last dictatorship in Europe”.He has said that Belarus could not possibly have a woman leader because she “would collapse, poor thing.”Amnesty International has accused Lukashenko government of “misogyny” and targeting female activists with discriminatory tactics.Lukashenko latest election declaration said that he is still legally married but few can recall ever seeing the wife he wed in 1975.He concluded a 2012 argument over rights with Germany openly gay former foreign minister Guido Westerwelle by saying: “Better to be a dictator than gay.”This machismo is accompanied by folksiness that appealed to voters used to the stiff octogenarians that dominated Soviet political life around the time of the superpower collapse in 1991.Lukashenko likes being filmed driving tractors or picking watermelons and potatoes.