Former spokesman for Milinkevich: They fool us again

Pavel Mazheika criticises the initiative of his former boss.

An employee of Belsat TV channel and former political prisoner, who was Aliaksandr Milinkevich's spokesman in the 2006 presidential election campaign, wrote on his Facebook account about the initiative of the Public Referendum.

“I have the impression that they are fooling us again. The same actors. They earlier promised they would decide by March 25 how a single candidate would be chosen.

'We do it because the previous election campaigns showed that it is not enough to have the name of a single candidate on the day of the official announcement of elections or two or three months before the elections,' BPF leader Aliaksei Yanukevich is confident.

Little time has passed since Andrei Dzmitryeu, one of the leaders of Tell the Truth civil campaign, assured us that the question is not who will be instead Lukashenka, but what will be proposed. The question of the single opposition candidate was put off and, as it seems to me, forgotten for this election campaign.

They try to fascinate us with a new idea of a 'public referendum': they think 'who' and 'what' have been put aside, now 'how' is important. I fear to think that there are many other questions – 'how much', 'why', 'what for', 'with whom' and even more problematic 'where'. They can look for answers to them too.

What do we have in result? Collecting signatures and informing us about violations made by the authorities? Shouting joyfully that Belarusians are 'getting rid of fear'? And after the referendum is not carried out saying 'the regime again demonstrated that they don't want changes in Belarus'? Looks like a mockery.

They just fool us playing for time and inventing new projects. They fool us to make us believe that leaders not just imitate work, but know what to do, have an action plan and a winning strategy. It resembles me a joke about Brezhnev, who decided to save chickens at a poultry farm and said to draw yellow circles and green triangles on the wall, but all chickens died when he still had plenty of ideas,” the journalist wrote.

It should be reminded that the Movement for Freedom, the BPF party and civil campaign Tell the Truth have launched the campaign “Public Referendum”. Representatives of the three organisations said at a press conference they had agreed on long-term cooperation. According to Uladzimir Niakliaeu, the cooperation will last for at least three election campaigns - local, presidential and parliamentary “elections”.