Our candidate and yours

The year of 2013 that has successfully left us the other day has left some discussions unfinished.

One of them is the discussion over the nomination of a single presidential candidate by Belarusian opposition. The discussion has been ardent and even inspired for some. We start getting the impression that it is nearly the fate of the whole country that is dependent on it.

What is the funniest in this discussion? Exactly that we already had single candidates.

We had a super candidate in 2001 – a trade union chief Hancharyk. Political scientists were astonished: the head of million-large trade unions himself embodied and headed the opposition! The issue of his victory was decided beforehand by political engineers. What did we have in the end? In the end we had such a shame that “neither Pharaoh, nor Solomon dreamt of” – this single candidate and the head of the opposition personally drove out from the square those, who came there to stand for his victory. What about us? We cried and went away.

There was a single candidate in 2006 too. Political engineers were astonished again – he united the whole opposition with the third sector. We remember what we came out of that campaign with – with the bitterness of defeat and betrayal. Thank God there were couple hundred young people, who captured October Square for four days and renamed it into Kastus Kalinouski Square. They did not get the victory, but showed the nation’s aspiration for freedom and saved the people’s dignity.

2015 will come soon – the fifth (!) time the president will enter Drazdy. And they are again suggesting us to focus on a single candidate.

A single opposition candidate is, of course, good; but as 2001 and 2006 brightly show is far from being a panacea for all opposition and society’s sicknesses. Rather than such single candidates, the whole political spectrum of candidates of 2010 is better – everyone could support the one they liked. What is there to tell – 30-50 thousand in the Avenue in 2010 is more serious than the 100 people in 2011 or 500 people in 2006.

No, it is not a single candidate that is the key to victory, but in what we are doing on the day when Lukashenka is stealing our votes. Our and your candidate is our aspiration for changes, this is our strategy. No more words are needed here. Nothing has changed in our country for 20 years already: once in five years our and yours candidate is the Square.

The generalissimo is as weak as he has never been. After the terroristic acts of 2001 and 2011 he will never again throw the dust of Belarusian stability in our eyes. After the devaluations of 2012 and 2013 he will never again get back the votes of the deceived and robbed.

Our and your candidate in 2015 should be mighty. He should be united. He should be goal-oriented. With this candidate we will get back our country and freedom.

Zmicier Dashkievich, specially for charter97.org