Viktar Martsinovich: There are many questions to Liabedzka

The country had a serious trauma in 2010. We haven't been speaking about it for five years, and the trauma shows itself again.

Belarusian journalist, art critic and writer Viktar Martsinovich said it to Radio Svaboda.

“We are observing the continuation of the 2010 election campaign. It has returned to us,” he said. “Questions now appear to Anatol Liabedzka about why Yaraslau Ramanchuk was released in 2010 and how it influenced the release of Liabedzka rather than about his election campaign.

The country had a serious trauma in 2010. We haven't been speaking about it for five years, but the trauma has shown itself again.”

Viktar Martsinovich emphasises he means all participants of the 2010 campaign.

“The trauma affected all those engaged in the 2010 elections in one way or another,” he says. “I don't say Liabedzka is guilty of something. I mean it's not everything clear with those elections.

We are observing the disappearance of a political element as such. I was in a company of intellectuals lately, and we spoke about impressions of Miami bar, where waitresses wear bikinis. The fact that society discusses a restaurant during the process that is supposed to determine its future for the next five years is a symptom of a trauma, a symptom of amputated political elements.

I would compare these elections with the situation of the Union of Writers in the Belarusian Soviet Republic in 1937. At least 100 writers were executed in October. All who remained alive gathered, Kupala was speaking, but all were trying not to recall what had happened, not to recall their killed or imprisoned friends and colleagues.

This atmosphere explains why candidates don't collect many signatures.”