"Workers, Just Like It Was At MZKT, Will Shout "Leave!"

Yanukovich is already waiting for a new "neighbor" in the Russian Federation.

At the end of the working week, the former ruler decided to share his important thoughts. He chose the Minsk Matavela Plant (MVZ) as the stage, the Puppeteer and Sheep telegram channel writes.

The choice, to put it bluntly, is quite strange. According to one of the leading Belarusian channels about the economy, the staff of the MVZ decreased by more than 30 (!) times between 2007 and 2018: from 2,700 to 76 people. The deplorable state of the MVZ is a perfect illustration of the prosperity of Belarusian enterprises under the "wise" leadership of AL.

The obvious question arises: why did Lukashenka decide to step into the spotlight of the state mass media with such a losing set? The clue becomes clearer when we consider what kind of personnel remains at the moribund Belarusian enterprise. It is clear that the head must remain, as well as his deputies and their secretaries. The ideological department must not be dismissed in a state-owned factory either. Therefore, it turns out that it is not necessarily the case that there will be at least one person who knows the secret of how to handle a screwdriver out of the 76 people working at the MVZ.

That is, Lukashenka only pretended to speak to the workers, but in fact there was a completely different audience. A very good, very loyal audience - the one that has every reason to take seriously one of Lukashenka's main scare stories, that the protest will win and you will all be out of work. For the useless bureaucrats who have ruined their factory, this is the holy truth. A worker can always earn his bread, because he is used to working hard, but a factory ideologist, given there's a real economic system, might not be able to get a job as a watchman. It would be the workers, as it was at the MZKT, who would shout "Leave!" - but the talentless managers of the MVZ would be on the contrary begging to stay.

Lukashenka delighted his fanbase with big plans to modernize the MVZ. "Big investment plans - money from the budget - failure of modernization - new investment plans" - this is the wheel of Sansara, on which the regime leaders love to ride, because each new cycle leads to their personal enrichment. Except that previously this ride of unprecedented generosity was sponsored by the Russian Federation. And now there is no money and we have to buy the loyalty of the subordinates with empty promises.

After mentioning Russia, we can't help but remember Lukashenka's justifications for his luxurious residences. "I don't have a palace," - the former ruler declared. The very notion of "palace" has been inextricably linked to another permanent leader since January of this year (five letters; spin the drum or guess the word at once?). And of course, the mention of the palace means that Lukashenka is returning to his favorite theme. For 25 years he has been trying to play on the contrast between oligarchic Russia, where everything is stolen, and Belarus, which has been saved by the "honest" anti-corruption fighter.

The fact of the matter is that there are really no secret palaces in Belarus. But the point here is not modesty, but rather the absolute shamelessness of the Belarusian regime. Russian ruling elites have to create complex chains of Cypriot offshore companies and register the property on the names of their cousins. In Belarus, the gilded residences (and there are more than a dozen of them) are built either with money from the presidential fund (the cigarette business of the Lukashenka family) or directly with budget funds. In other words, if the Russian elite picks people's pockets in secret, the Belarusian elite picks people's pockets in the open. As we know from the Criminal Code, the first is called theft, and the second - robbery and is considered a more serious crime.

Justifying the luxury of his palaces, Lukashenka states that they are the property of the state, not his own, and that everything will be given to the people after he leaves the office. It is a good argument, no doubt about it. But one question arises: what will we do later with the concrete parallelepipeds gilded from the inside?

There are only a few connoisseurs of this architectural style in the world: Kim Jong-un, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Viktor Yanukovich. The first two have enough palaces as it is, and Yanukovich should just wait until Lukashenka becomes his neighbor.