Lustration In Belarus: What Awaits Lukashenka’s Officials, Siloviki?

The usurper has launched certain recesses all by himself.

Political scientist and popular YouTube blogger Dzmitry Balkunets hosted a discussion on the channel “How to win? Towards change”.

Leader of the European Belarus civil campaign, ex-deputy foreign minister, presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov and presidential candidate, former deputy foreign minister, creator of the High-Tech Park Valer Tsapkala discussed the strategy for changing the situation in the country on air.

The participants in the event discussed the question: what should be the lustration of officials and security officers associated with the Lukashenka regime?

Andrei Sannikov believes that this issue needs to be carefully considered:

-As for lustration. I participated in scientific research in Belarus. What to do? I am very careful about this issue. You have to sit with a pen and count. Because we have such “fighters” who will shoot everyone tomorrow and go to the Kremlin, only to avoid doing anything inside the country.

You just have to look, because I am a supporter of the South African version, where reconciliation commissions were created and where people repented of their crimes and the commission decided whether to forgive or not to forgive, and there were judicial penalties. This is already a rather serious process when all this is happening publicly and the person has to live with it.

I don't think a total lustration is needed. Of course, all the crimes that are associated with the death of people, with murders - this is unconditional.

And in relation to the rest, you just need to discuss this issue. Some say that nothing will work without lustration, but the Poles did everything. The lustration was rather formal. A rather tough lustration was announced in the Czech Republic, but nothing happened either. Then sometimes the results of such lustration were opposite. Scoundrels successfully passed lustration, and specialists remained overboard and lost their jobs.

We are a country rich in people, but if we take the scale of the tasks that Belarus will face after Lukashenka, then we really need personnel. There is the experience of military experts, albeit Leninist, albeit revolutionary, but this is the experience of attracting specialists who used to fight against the Bolshevik government to their own side, to work in the industry and so on. It is clear that odious personalities are already lustred by the people.

What will be the procedures for registration of this lustration is another question. But there are urgent tasks of the state that will need to be addressed, including with the involvement of the security forces, because the protection of public order, which is skewed today, is a serious task for the state, which will need not commissars, but specialists.

Valer Tsapkala shared his experience that he happened to observe in Uzbekistan:

-I agree with Mr. Sannikov 100%, and I can say that after I left the Hi-Tech Park, I advised the government of Uzbekistan, they created two similar structures: the Mirzo-Ulugbek Innovation Center and IT-Park Uzbekistan.

So, quite simply before my eyes, I saw confirmation of the well-known phrase that the fish rots from the head. And I have one acquaintance, with whom I have already become quite close, he was a representative of a large international IT company, and at the same time he had his own private company of 15 people, which wrote software on order. And as an Uzbek, he simultaneously had a share in the restaurant that made plov, he was the owner of the cafe. So he says: “Officials under Karimov constantly ate in my cafe, they came, just ate and left without paying.”

That is, there was a sort of domestic corruption. But all the same, there were constant checks, there were always some difficulties, they were constantly watching you, and so on and so forth. When Mirziyeyev came, he said the following: from now on, the prosecutor's office will not suppress people, but will be engaged in ensuring that no checks are carried out. And literally everywhere there was an advertisement that if they came to you with a check, then please call this number, and you can then clarify whether this check is really authorized. And a three-year ban was made on all checks in general.

In fact, the same bureaucracy that used to be focused on suppressing civil society, on suppressing small and medium-sized businesses, in order not to give them the opportunity to raise their heads, immediately turned into a support tool. Officials changed their attitude: they began to work in terms of finding some kind of investment. That is, the attitude has completely changed.

The same kind of people who were under Karimov and who remained under Mirziyeyev. But when there was a turn in economic policy, it was immediately visible, and momentarily everyone began to follow completely different algorithms and rules. We live badly not because our officials are bastards, but simply because there is such a command from above and these messages of hatred. These same messages of hatred come from the very top. That is, Lukashenka bullies all sorts of ministers there, governors. They further down, so to speak, bully all heads of departments.

These are the messages that he sends down from above - they reach ordinary citizens. For a long time he managed to deceive them, saying, see, I am punishing them there, the people should love me for this, because their bosses are bad, but I am good. Now the events of recent years have opened the eyes of many that it is he who is the cause of all our failures.

Dzmitry Balkunets noted that Lukashenka himself has already launched the lustration of his officials:

- And it even seems to me that he partly launched the lustration himself. Because large-scale repressions also affected officials. Mr. Sannikov, do you think this is reminiscent of events, for example, in 1937-1938, when the system devoured its own people?

- I absolutely agree, but this is not a lustration. Yes, this is 1937, because today he is fighting his own cronies, flesh and blood of the system. In general, those who are loyal to this system are in prison today. Even among those whom we know, there (in prisons - edit.) are supporters of Lukashenka, sincere supporters, there are also those who created this regime.