Yury Khashchavatski: Lukashenka Should Have Fired Himself

The dictator does some "neurotic jerking".

Lukashenka dismissed Yakubovich, Davydzka and Kaziyatka from the managing positions at the leading state media today. What stands behind the dismissals of the propagandists? Famous Belarusian movie director Yury Khashchavatski answers this question for Charter97.org:

- When I heard this news, my first thought was: Pavel Yakubovich is one year younger than me (Yury Khashchavatski is 70 - edit.), time to retire. However, the point is that both Henadz Davydzka and Yury Kaziyatka are younger people, it seems premature to say goodbye to them. And here, we see the entire "Editors' Club" fired.

Apparently, Lukashenka understood the main thing: the strength with which he presses on the people, begins to wear off. The power of propaganda melts due to the fact that people stopped watching TV, reading the official media, and are looking for information on the Internet, on independent websites more and more often.

The propagandistic effect of the work of these guys - Yakubovich, Davydzka, Kaziyatka - all the time decreased. They have already lost their information war. Obviously, they will be employed somewhere to work like "senators" or something like this, but for important tasks they are no longer suitable.

In a broader sense, the essence of these permutations can be reduced to the following: whatever Lukashenka does, he fails to do the main thing. First of all, he should have fired himself. Instead of this, the ruler, as usual, is doing some neurotic jerking.

He has reasons to be nervous though. These sensational resigns chronologically coincided with the blocking of Charter'97. It's pretty obvious that the changes that are happening at the propagandistic front are not in favour of Lukashenka.

Apparently, this bothers him much.

Does he have a way out? Well, younger people will come to the "Editors' Club" now. And they will start "putting things in order", in their way. What kind of "order" will it be? The Sovetskaya Byelorussia will be called "Anti-Sovetskaya Belarus"? No. Everything will remain unchanged. Because the main goal of the Lukashenka regime is not to develop the country, but to stay at power, and that's it.

As for Yakubovich, Davydzka and Kaziyatka - they are used things now. They have been "used" and flushed down the toilet. This is an absolutely natural fate of all propagandists. Someone joked already, like, they will go and join Aliaksandr Zimouski now. Well, maybe they won't - this is not important at all, in the actual fact. What is important is that the people of such calibre will remain despised by Belarusians, and the "propagandist" stamp will stay with them forever.

- Are the dismissals connected with the blocking of Charter97.org?

- In my opinion, absolute connection can be traced. These resignations mean that there are processes on the propaganda front, which Lukashenka does not like. It is obvious that independent websites, Charter'97 in particular, have strengthened their authority in the society to such an extent (and the authority of the official media has collapsed so much) that it was necessary to take some measures. I think it's all interconnected. These are sides of the same coin. Both events occurred within the framework of the same impulse coming from power.

Shortly before the dismissal of the main propagandists, Minister of Information Aliaksandr Karliukevich said that it was necessary to strengthen the "work" on the Internet and social networks. It is quite obvious that the authorities do not like the situation in the information field. Simply put (and this is not a compliment), the work of our independent websites, first of all Charter'97, did not pass in vain, and they begin to win. These resignations are one of the victories on the information front. And this is very, very important.