Sketch With an Imaginary Object

A referendum is like a Beckett play.

I like it. A referendum without observers and with election commission members in balaclavas, with classified names and a legend approved by the secret services, is great. That is the way it should be. It is part of the same historical logic that leads a dictatorship to such an absurd situation that it is no longer possible to be afraid of. One can only guffaw. Not to laugh, not to giggle, but to guffaw. I don't understand why one tries to make serious faces and seriously regret that European observers will not come to Minsk, and the local observers - those without balaclavas - will not be observers.

Frankly speaking, I was a little surprised in 2020 by the general eagerness to sign up as observers. I cannot answer, even now, after a year and a half, what phenomenon they were going to observe. Was it the elections? But if there are no elections, there is no object to observe. All the attempts to observe the "elections" and "referendum" in Belarus are like the sketch with an imaginary object in the drama studio, when a person has to imitate, for example, that he/she holds an umbrella and it is raining all around. But we know there is no rain, no umbrellas, and Belarus is far from being a drama studio. Everything is real here.

The number of people on the streets and squares of our cities in 2020 told the world far more about the will of the Belarusians than any report of the observation mission. The photos of women climbing out of school windows were made not by observers, but by passers-by (now these women will wear balaclavas and hoodies to make them unnoticeable). Journalists and social networking users were taking photos of the lines to the polling stations. Manipulations with ballot boxes and ballots were made by people coming to the polling stations.

In principle, observers become an unnecessary link in the 21st century, in the era of social networks and messenger services, let alone in a dictatorship. We saw so many depressing pictures of people honestly registering as observers and trying to get on the ballot box during those August days, just to get a glimpse at the polling station. The few who were allowed to stay in a corner near the far wall and stretched their necks, unable to see anything anyway. Meanwhile, an ordinary voter came in under the guise of voting and took all the pictures one wanted. So a person with a phone easily replaces any observation mission.

The second question, equally important: wouldn't the Belarusians have understood anything without the OSCE ODIHR's evidence of non-transparency and falsification of the election or referendum? Would they be naive to think that Lukashenka won? No. The point of the presence of the European observation missions in the early years of our century was only that no one was put behind bars in their presence (however, even this did not always work). And a few days before their departure, some managed to escape, and sometimes the interest of the security services dissipated. Since 2010, no foreign presence has stopped the Belarusian executioners, and the command "take him/her!" was given regardless of the number of international observers present in Belarus at the moment. So their presence made sense only for Makei. It was an opportunity for him to arrange a buffet, have a drink and a snack and practices the English language.

But now everything has reached the perfect logic of the absurd: the classified names of the members of the electoral commissions, balaclavas, absence of observers and polling stations in the embassies, Tsoi's songs on the Sovbelia website, which encourage Belarusians to go to the referendum - it is simply a masterpiece created by the best minds of the Belarusian state. Ionesco and Beckett must be rolling over in their graves. So why should we spoil it all with sketches with an imaginary subject in a burned-out theatre?

Let's ignore the trifles and do not miss the essentials. If we destroy the dictatorship, the elections will come back. Together with the observers and the songs and dances. It cannot but be that way. In the most famous absurd play, Waiting for Godot heroes wait throughout the two acts for a certain Godot to come and save them. But he doesn't come. And he won't come to us either. And no European missions will play Godot's role in our story. Only ourselves. Fortunately, we already know how to do it.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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