Lukashenka Becoming Helpless And Caricature-Like

Following in Brezhnev's footsteps.

Employees of state organizations all over the country “ask” Lukashenka to run for a seventh term. Cooks and firefighters, military personnel and students, doctors and court journalists — as one, they record a simple video clip made as if from a carbon copy.

First, the one who has not let go of the reins of power from his far from young hands for thirty years appears on the screen and coquettishly says that he will go to the “elections” again if his supporters say: “It is necessary”.

And then there are scenes identical in content: employees of state organizations joyfully pronounce the cherished request, sometimes illustrating it with their own bodies.

Why do they do this if he already agrees to everything? Because it is “necessary”. Not in the sense that all these people really sincerely decided to persuade Lukashenka not to unclench his blue fingers. They were told “it is necessary”, so they humiliate themselves individually and in groups.

Try to refuse this in today's Belarus and you will watch this disgrace from the sidelines as an unemployed person. And that is in the best case. In the worst case, they can “find” an “incorrect” subscription, like or repost in your phone.

Why did the authorities decide not to stop on gas station workers and the military? The answer is also simple, it is enough to study the daily chronicle of repressions: people are arrested for the slightest manifestation of disloyalty and a hint of participation in protests everywhere — in hospitals and clinics, in forestry enterprises and at the entrances of factories, in banks and even district executive committees.

And therefore, on the eve of the next reappointment, it is necessary to show the same widespread popular “love”. And the fact that this is forced love, with threats of losing one's job, or even one's freedom, does not bother the organizers of this act of mass humiliation. These people “don't give away their beloved”, even if she desperately resists.

The price of such devotion, mixed with coercion and humiliation, is well known. But this is not the only thing the newly-minted leader should worry about. In the last years of his life, Leonid Brezhnev, who by that time had become the object of caustic jokes and ridicule, tried to retire. But his closest circle firmly told him: “No, it is necessary!”

As a result, he remained in people's memories as a helpless and caricatured figure.

Artsiom Sinitsyn, Solidarity

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