29 March 2024, Friday, 12:45
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The Street Is Power

6
The Street Is Power
Iryna Khalip

Four words are the only agenda for any negotiations.

"No one will negotiate with the street". I read this phrase in a recent interview with a person who had left the detention facility. The idea is simple, although it has been often wrapped in different words lately to add a profound meaning. There is nothing to add. The result is still the same: the street is illegitimate, negotiations are possible only with serious structures. After all, anyone can establish a structure and give any name or abbreviation for it. The main thing is bureaucracy vs bureaucracy. If one party has advisors and ministers, the other party should have them too. These people can discuss the future of the country, while the street should remain the street.

We have heard it all many times before. In different words and intonations. With various degrees of fear and arrogance. Some have called us fringe groups. Others called us Square. Third - the street. All of them were not like-minded people, but sometimes enemies. However, their views on those who take to the square mysteriously coincided: those in the street are a fringe group. Let them stand on squares, walk along the avenues - some will mentally support them, others will disperse them with water cannons and batons, but both will treat them almost equally.

In reality, everything is quite different. Now Belarus suffers severe lack of legitimacy. There is no legal power in the country - neither executive nor legislative. One can't find a single legitimate deputy, a district or a rural one. It's no sense to mention judicial power. In general, all branches are rotten and scattered, and there is nothing but ashes and stench in these branches. The street has become the only legitimate subject of power. No matter how depressing it is for those who are used to the subjects with ties and plates, alas, the whole world has not expected such a reality of our time. Today's Belarusian power is a street. Any other subject can negotiate with it only. No one in Belarus but a street is authorized to speak on behalf of the people.

The street has already generated its agenda for negotiations. One only needs to hear what it says: "Go away! Release! Elections!" It sounds brief and capacious. All the witty banners and slogans are just variations. There are only three points. The Belarusian people represented by the street do not intend to discuss anything else. At least until these three points are met. They do not include amendments to the Constitution.

As always, a retired tyrant is trying to turn aside, somewhere in the spitty corridor, which nobody has been using for a long time, to make people discuss the constitutional amendments that aim to throw us into euphoria we, according to his plan, will not be able to break out of. What could be better than a return of two presidential terms instead? He takes the advantage of the amendments and zeroes out the terms as he did in 1996. Two years of his then-legal presidency he swept away from the table and started anew against the backdrop of a new distorted Constitution. That is why we will discuss all the constitutional reforms when three demands are met. Everything else is beyond discussion.

The street is the only legitimate party to negotiate. It is not abstract. You and I can form a delegation, an interim administration, a coalition government. They may involve councils of district barricades, deputies from yards and neighbourhoods, delegates from strike committees. Is it not enough? We can succeed in every negotiation at any level. The main thing is to avoid meaningless demagoguery, the slimy algae of bureaucratic nonsense, defeat wrapped in dubious temporary tranquillity, slogans that corrode the essence faster than acid.

The street has successfully coped with the first wave of coronavirus, providing hospitals with personal protective equipment and creating a network of assistance to elderly neighbours. Now it resists the second wave. The street releases from prisons. Yards raises money to pay neighbours' fines. District chats can inform who needs a lift after the protests. Neighbours gather in columns before the rallies to ensure the safety of participants. They take care of children, air neighbours' dogs, print leaflets, and clean the yards. The street authorities have cleaned up our cities and created a system of mutual assistance that no one can destroy with rubber bullets or water cannons.

Do you hear what the street says? The Minsk street of 200 thousand Minsk merges into one with the street of other cities. It says: "Go away! Release! Elections!" Four words. They are easy to remember. The street is us. Four words are the future. The country is of the highest value. All the rest is junk mail.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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