Translated material
"Who's the boss"
The words he spoke were filled with sincere pathos. “The revolution, which was talked about so much, failed in Belarus. It could not have been otherwise. The elections were held in accordance with the constitution, fairly and democratically. The Belarusians held them for themselves and showed who’s boss.” Lukashenko paused at this moment and looked around the room. Obviously, in order to make sure that those present understood him correctly. Stormy applause confirmed his assumption. And the head of state sat down on a chair.
As for the elections themselves, even on the eve of March 19, the Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Belarus, Lidiya Ermoshina, warned that this event would become a “holiday” for all residents of the country. It's hard to argue with this. The Vremya Novostei correspondent became convinced of this closer to Sunday evening, when he was among 10-15 thousand gathered on October Square in Minsk, where those who voted in the elections against the current head of Belarus gathered. Almost all of them, despite the confidence that they would be in the minority during the elections, looked almost happy.
They answered my perplexed questions about this with different words that carried something like this: “We haven’t gathered together in such numbers for many years and we are tired of being silent.” There was no need to write about this rally at all; it was very similar to the Moscow rallies of the late 80s of the last century on Manezhnaya Square. If not for one “but”. No one expected that people would even risk coming here, to the center of the capital. The fear that spread throughout Minsk in the morning of that day was too great. Leaflets in the entrances of residential buildings and SMS messages of unknown origin warned of an imminent massacre, which would certainly be provoked by opposition “thugs.” Soon real frost began and a snowstorm began to swirl. Then Lukashenko will say that it was God who sent such punishment on his opponents...
The leaders of the anti-Lukashenko Frond spoke at the rally. To be honest, they weren't very impressive. One of the presidential candidates, Alexander Kazulin, appeared on a makeshift podium, tied like an apron over his clothes with some kind of image of the Mother of God. Actually, he confirmed this by saying that the “Mother of God” is with us... Nothing else was remembered from his speech. The single opposition candidate, Alexander Milinkevich, called the elections a farce and expressed hope that the international community will not recognize their results. Of course, he was not mistaken, if we mean the Western community. The Belarusian democrats were supported by their colleagues from Poland, Germany, Ukraine and Russia. SPS leader Nikita Belykh was laconic: “Syabry (friends), it is not true that Russia supports Lukashenko, our party is with you!” The German Bundestag deputy assured that Belarus will definitely be in the family of free European nations, making a bold assumption that that same evening “Lukashenko’s dictatorship will collapse.”
Yesterday, Mr. Milinkevich told Vremya Novostei that he would “within 24 hours file a complaint with the Central Election Commission and the court about the unfair nature of the elections and demand repeat elections.” The opposition leader, however, added that he does not hope for a legal procedure - “dictators do not go to repeat elections and the street and people’s access to information can play a decisive role.”
A few hours earlier, your correspondent carelessly turned on the TV and learned the monstrous details of the rally he had witnessed. It turns out that people gathered in the square “despondently,” but there they “handed out free alcohol,” which “affected the speeches of the speakers.” And then, it turns out, masses of people moved to Victory Square, where they “desecrated” the monument, “lighting from the Eternal Flame” and throwing cigarette butts there. I won’t lie, I also stood not far from the flame of the eternal flame and even smoked, but I didn’t see all the above-mentioned disgrace. But knowledgeable people reminded me of several young men in the square, dressed in hats and sweatpants and defiantly parading with cans of beer in their hands. These same fellows later ended up near the Victory Monument. Apparently, they knew what and at what moment to do there, because the next day Mr. Lukashenko promised one Western journalist, who also doubted the adequacy of the television report, to separately show video footage of the “abuse of the oppositionists”... Indeed, I remembered one such fellow , who warmed up the crowd with his readiness to “now go smash the presidential administration, this dictatorial lair.” The television cameramen who surrounded him showed the greatest interest in the “revolutionary.” It is possible that soon the whole of Belarus will see it on screens...
As for Alexander Lukashenko, at yesterday's press conference he said that the day before no more than 5 thousand people gathered in the square, of which one and a half thousand were journalists, diplomats and onlookers. And most of the rest are 14-15 year olds who came there for 20 thousand Belarusian rubles (10 dollars). Lukashenko himself did not see the rally, but he was “informed.” Then he criticized critics of the so-called early voting in elections (more than 20 percent of voters), “it is convenient for people, and our task is to make elections easier for them” and “there is no need to teach us.” He did not guarantee that his opponents in the elections, Milinkevich and Kazulin, would not be imprisoned after the elections if it was discovered that they had broken the law. Here the president opened up and remembered how Kazulin was “always close to him, almost eating from the same plate,” and became a “traitor” by starting to gossip about his personal life. Then the president talked a lot about his friends in the outside world, the deceased Milosevic and the still living Saddam Hussein, about how he “never traded his friendship with Russia,” although he was offered $300 million for this.
Last night thousands of people came out to October Square again. As Belarusian sociologist Oleg Manaev told Vremya Novostey, “people are really starting to wake up, but the actions of the opposition they support will be real only when they can document the falsification of the elections and then propose a specific further plan of action.” And Aleksandar Milinkevich really asked for “hot tea”: he called for hot tea to be brought to the square. The first tents are about to appear here...