Aliaksandr Jarashuk: Reality will get worse than Lukashenka promises

Belarusans will pay high price for the two decades the authorities spent in vain; and the regime will hardly go through the following years smoothly.

At the accounting and voting meeting of the Belarusian Congress Of Democratic Trade Unions (BCDTU) on December 5 Aliaksandr Jarashuk was re-elected as a head of the BCDTU for the forth term, with 54 votes in his support and 40 votes against. Interestingly enough, the election went unopposed.

What are the plans for strategy development and actions among independent trade unions in the short-term perspective? Aliaksandr Jarashuk told “EuroBelarus” Information Service about it.

- You have been the head of the BCDTU since 2002 and have been re-elected for another three years. Have you faced the accusations of power usurpation in the Congress?

- Honestly, I am accused of being a pensioner; that is why I am annoyed with the Belarusan authorities that didn’t venture to prolong the pension age so that in my 63 I would be able to fit it the age criteria of those who judge people by their passport. As to the usurpation of power, BCDTU is the organization that lives according to the democratic rules, and the elections in it are unpredictable. Both three years ago and now I could have been denied trust. Where do you see usurpation?

- Why did the election of the head of BCDTU go unopposed?

- It’s not the question to ask me. Personally, I was disappointed with having no alternative, though I was sure that the different situation would appear.

- How can you evaluate the social and economic situation in the country on the threshold of the president campaign? Lukashenka has already announced that Belarusans are to forget about welfare gains and tighten their belts.

- He said the right thing; it is only that he forgot to mention that the reality would be worse than he promises; earlier or later the moment comes when one has to pay for everything. Belarusans will pay high price for the two lost decades. Laying hopes on the command-administrative methods of economy management, ignoring market relations, and staking on Russian subsidies and preferences has led to ineffective and uncompetitive economy. The following years will be the most complicated in the newest Belarusan history, and I wouldn’t be that certain saying that the Belarusan regime will manage to survive them. Taking into account the external challenges it might happen that it will hardly survive them.

- According to the media, the Production Association "Gomselmash" is to dismiss 5 thousand people by the end of the year. Obviously, it is not the only case of wholesale dismissal in Belarus; it is only that we don’t know much about the other cases. How threatening the scale of the unemployment might be, and what consequences can it lead to?

- The release of the labor force is an inevitable price to pay for the switch from the command-administrative to the market economy. It happened to all our neighbors – to a bigger degree with Poland, Lithuania, less with Ukraine and Russia. We might start it finally, and the worst thing is that the process of job cuts is starting (as in the case with “Gomselmash”), while the market economy is still not here, but is managed by the archaic command-administrative methods instead. And that means that we should neither expect new investments to come nor the development of minor and middle business. And all that means that we won’t have enough new working places for the released labor force. Thus, the perspectives for the Belarusan workers look very gloomy.

- On the threshold of the BCDTU meeting Lukashenka conferred the Federation of Trade Unions with the supervisory and informatory functions. What does it mean in the situation when the living standard of the population is declining?

- I think that this is just rhetoric, although it is very revealing. The paradox is that on the one hand, the current Federal Trade Union is unable to do anything; and on the other – it looks very absurd when we imagine a trade union worker who is informing against his boss that he has choses earlier. This decree will cause lots of reports and talking, but this is all.

- The BCDTU will have to act under new conditions: the four-billion Federation of Trade Unions is falling out of the workers’ defence process and delegates these functions to the ten-thousand BCDTU. How will independent trade unions build their strategy basing on it?

- I don’t want to make any ambitious statements, such as that we will take the responsibility for all the Belarusan workers; but I can say with confidence that we won’t just observe how social and economic problems are building up, how salaries get frozen and decreased, and how the living standard of the workers’ is decreasing. So we reserve the right to act according to the situation.

- Has BCDTU decided on the forthcoming president campaign?

- BCDTU is a non-political organization; that is why we didn’t have the task to decide on the participation in the president campaign.