Republic
31.03.2006
A “colour revolution” failed in Belarus because the power is strong and effective here, because the Belarusian people look into the future with confidence and link their lives with this power, aide to the president – chief of the main ideology department of the presidential administration of the Republic of Belarus stated in an interview with the TV program “Hard Talk” on the First Channel.
He cited the British paper “Guardian” which on the eve of the elections wrote: “Would you expect a European leader who has presided over a continual increase in real wages for several years, culminating in a 24% rise over the past 12 months, to be voted out of office? What if he has also cut VAT, brought down inflation, halved the number of people in poverty in the past seven years, and avoided social tensions by maintaining the fairest distribution of incomes of any country in the region?”
According to Oleg Proleskovskiy, from the first day of the election campaign Messrs. Milinkevich and Kozulin, being aware of the lack of prospects, called on the people to take to the streets, or to “maidan”. “However, after international terrorists came to help the opposition, the Belarusian opposition stepped out from the legal framework into the criminal one”, Oleg Proleskovskiy said. They called on people to gather on the “maidan”: yet, the opposition leaders did not know what to do with those few people who had come. Even one of the active members of the popular front Khodyko said that the opposition lacked a concrete plan of actions before and does not have it now.
On March 19, on the Election Day, they “gathered on Victory Square turning the Eternal Fire into whether an ashtray or a lighter. Belarus has never witnessed such blasphemy. Having seen this on TV many veterans put on their war medals and went out to stop this happening”, Oleg Proleskovskiy said.
He noted that “the whole world was laughing at this “blue maidan”. One Russian newspaper wrote: “Kiev had a revolution, Minsk – just a quiet improper sound”.
The aid to the president pointed to another feature: “this pair of candidates betrayed their people who stood on the square in freezing temperatures. They have not even paid them. They betrayed them both financially and morally. The opposition leaders did not spend a night in the tent camp. They must now hear the curses of mothers of those children who undermined their health there”.
Oleg Proleskovskiy also said that officially USD 12 million was invested to the “blue revolution” in Belarus. “Yet the figure was much higher”. The aid to the president believes that the West should require a financial report from Messrs. Milinkevich and Kozulin.
“Remember what they were doing on March 25? They were wandering around and provoking the militia. Somebody called a Russian journalist on-site asking if they were beaten up already. He answered: “Not yet, but there is a hope…” The blue maidan is a tombstone on the grave of the old opposition,” the aid to the president concluded.