Uladzimir Matskevich: There is a delayed-action bomb in Lukashenka’s words

svaboda.org

Certain population groups were labelled as potential enemies for redirecting anger of dissatisfied population if situation in Belarus worsens.

On April 28 during the State of the Nation Address Aliaksandr Lukashenka demonstrated the worst qualities he has: aggressiveness, xenophobia, and ignorance. Lukashenka found himself in the situation when he had nothing to say neither to the Parliament nor to the nation. And then demagogy went into battle.

Uladzimir Matskevich, philosopher and methodologist, the head of the Board of the International Consortium “EuroBelarus “, discussed Lukashenka’s statement, potential enemies of the nation, and simulation of Belarus-EU dialog with the “EuroBelarus” Information Service.

- Lukashenka’s State of the Nation Address causes bewilderment at best: there was neither form nor contents. What has the whole nation been observing recently?

- There is a tradition of performing certain rituals regularly, like issuing TV-programs regularly: they should be interesting, but at times they lack good plot – all regular things are characterized by quality drops.

Thus, Belarus borrowed a tradition of regular annual reports the president makes to the parliament. This year the term of report was changed – from the beginning of April to the end of the same month. The problems seem to have appeared back then: what can the president say to its nation, when the country is in the early stage of a serious crisis according to the experts, when the war is going on between the two neighboring countries, and Belarus is involved in this war this way or the other. In this situation the President has to adhere to the tradition and make a report before the parliament.

But he has nothing to say, since he has no program of reforms that the country urgently needs in economy, army, education, health, and absolutely all other systems in the country. The government and the president has no program of reforms, whereas ideas that are in the society and are suggested to the leadership of the country are unacceptable due to the ideology that has been cultivated for the long time.

Lukashenka found himself in the situation when he has nothing to say neither to the Parliament nor to the nation. And that is where demagogy that we heard yesterday starts.

- There are six months left before the presidential elections and the country is undergoing crisis. People are waiting for the answers: where do we go and what should we do? What have we heard instead of answers?

- We need to analyze the speech delivered by Lukashenka very carefully – both from the point of view of contents and from the point of view of psychology.

There is a delayed-action bomb in Lukashenka’s words. Certain population groups were labelled as potential enemies for redirecting anger of dissatisfied population if situation in Belarus worsens.

The biggest resonance caused Lukashenka’s anti-Semitism statements: about getting the situation with Jews under control and some normalization of relations with the Jews. It is impossible to understand what is that from Lukashenka’s statement, but it is a clear signal that anti-Semitic campaign might start. We can only hope that we won’t have direct pogroms and repressions.

Second group that was mentioned casually is the Church and church hierarchies, which Lukashenka seems to have aggravated relations with.

Next group are anonymous investors that don’t fulfill their obligations. Lukashenka conceals that there is corruption and various administrative obstacles in the country that prevent investors from fulfilling their obligations and achieve their goals.

Another group of potential enemies are parasites the country has been talking about for more than six months now.

The last group that might become a potential enemy is opposition. Though Lukashenka’s tone re opposition seemed to be different – he instructed the officials not to be afraid of it and have dialog with it. This is also understandable, since it is impossible to make a real enemy from the dead opposition.

Thus, now officials were invited to start a dialog with the opposition to borrow some ideas, moves, and promote further normalization of relations with Europe.

Potential enemies for directing aggression and mechanisms for deceiving European diplomats and politicians were named.

- Nobody says about the real dialog between the state and opposition and civil society, do they?

- Of course they don’t. There is basically no real opposition now. The dialog in the format suggested by Lukashenka is not a dialog, but a simulation, and very usual one: this is how Lukashenka simulated dialog in 1999-2000 under the auspices of the OSCE; similar simulations followed in the later years, including the latest initiative of the EU “European dialog on modernization”.

- In his speech Lukashenka frankly admitted: “We are the Russian World” adding that “if something happens, we will be with Russia. It is our ally. Of course, God prevent us from the situation when we will have to support our ally no matter what”. Many mass media interpret this statement as Belarus’ readiness to take Russia’s side in case of war. How justified are such conclusions?

- There are some grounds for such conclusions. The regime would like to distance itself from Russia, form the Russian politics, but its hands are tied since the Belarusan army is under the complete Russia’s control and are so closely tied with the similar Russian departments that it’s hard to distinguish between them. Lukashenka can’t rely on the army and law enforcement structures, cause if he will step against Kremlin, the head of these departments might step against him. That is why Lukashenka has no place for maneuvering.

- Despite the ongoing wave of thaw in Belarus-Europe relations, nothing comprehensible about cooperation with the EU was voiced.

- I think this is an attempt to avoid critics and actions on the part of Kremlin.

Nothing direct was voiced, though there some insinuations were made. Both the arguments about investors and the alleged dialog with the opposition were a message to Europe. Lukashenka tried to avoid direct arguments so that not to strain relations with Kremlin.

- Did you personally made a picture of the forthcoming presidential campaign after Lukashenka’s address.

- The attitude I had didn’t change and nothing new is to come. Campaign has already been planned and it will be quite sluggish. The only task that the regime will be resolving with the help of the administrative resource is attraction of people to polling stations. Efforts in this direction are already being made. Thus, third sector organizations are put in such situation when cooperation with the local authorities is directly linked with the behaviour during the election campaign. No surprises are to come with the “elections”.

However, what we can conclude from the speech is that Lukashenka has no serious command, no consultants that are able to correct his speeches. Judging by everything an almost one-month delay with the speech is caused by Lukashenka’s rejection of consulting services. That is why he demonstrated the worst qualities he has: aggressiveness, xenophobia, and ignorance even in relation to the questions he has to resolve during the whole term of his government.