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Belarusian Authorities Fly Off Handle, Making Anecdote True

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Belarusian Authorities Fly Off Handle, Making Anecdote True
DZMITRY RASTAYEU

The authorities have become impregnated with impudence for the last 25 years.

“We were born to make a fairy-tale true,” they used to sing at Komsomol constructions, high-powered five-year plans and the dollar at 16 kopecks. However, they never did. Big thunder brings little rain. Belarus was more lucky, with a correction that they made true not a fairy-tale, but an anecdote there.

For many years I have been waiting when an old joke about the laundry (- Hello, is this a laundry? - F**** laundry, this is the Ministry of Culture!) will finally acquire flesh and bones. It finally happened - it was only needed to give a call to the Ministry of Agriculture, it seems that they are the “cultural” fashion icons now.

“Stop doing this bullshit at a place you should not be doing it,” this phase is destined to become a saying! This is at the same level as Chernomyrdin’s “If someone’s hands are itching, it’s better to scratch some other place”. Well, the “why the f**** do you need my comment?” is also spectacular, but not to such an extent. However, these phrases do complete each other, and they can be elegantly combined.

Speaking seriously, it makes one bewildered to look at what is going on in the government’s circles. For the last 25 years, the authorities have become so impregnated with impudence and totally lost any culture they had, starting from the bottom ending at the top. If there are “cows covered with shit” at the top, why cannot there be “bullshit” at the bottom?

Let’s leave it, the lack of culture is a shortcoming of upbringing, not a disease. Even boorish and impudent people, being in a public space, usually refrain from speaking up whatever they think about, as they are afraid of the people’s judgement. Meanwhile, the Belarusian authorities seem to go off the handle and are afraid of nothing: the public opinion has been brought down to a mouse hole, and who’s afraid of a mouse in a hole?

Even with journalists they don’t stand upon ceremony. Well, why “even”?

It’s in civilized countries that the press is considered the fourth power. There, journalists are not divided into “honest” and “dishonest”, they can adhere to different views, support Trump or stand against him, but the principles of the freedom of speech are rock-solid for both. And the governments have to reckon with this.

In Belarus, the media community is divided into journalists and propagandists that serve the government, for whom the freedom of word and the journalists solidarity remain just empty words for them. Much more doors are open before them, they get fat financial bonuses from the authorities, but those who feed them have no respect for them.

Well, this is fair enough: landlords never treated servants in any other way. This could be disregarded - they got what they deserve, but, sadly, the authorities treat all journalists exactly like this.

In the civilized world, where the authorities feel responsibility before the society, an episode with the foul language sounding from a secretary of some institution could have been impossible. Could you imagine, for instance, a British reporter addressing to the press-service of the DEFRA for a comment, and they would response “F*ck your shitty comment?” Yeah, me neither.

However, if something like this did happen, the next morning the head of the department would publicly apologize for his of her subordinate, and the ex-press-secretary would be gone looking for a job in the docks (in our case, the press-secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture simply apologized after the notorious incident). We, in our turn, will have to long listen to the foul language, tolerate boorishness and shouting of the impudent authorities.

Dzmitry Rastayeu, Solidarity

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