Belarusians go to pickets with sneakers, which symbolize their intention to get rid of Lukashenko. He's been compared to a cockroach.
When the coronavirus epidemic happened, Belarusians saw that President Alexander Lukashenko's position was a threat to human life, said Natalia Radina, a Belarusian journalist and editor-in-chief of the Charter-97 website.
The pre-revolutionary situation in Belarus. Many say that the velvet revolution has already begun. Tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Belarusian cities and queue to sign for independent presidential candidates.
First of all – for Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of the famous Belarusian blogger Sergei Tikhanovskiy, who is arrested and is in prison. Tikhanovskiy is a people's leader who appeared not so long ago and evokes great sympathy among Belarusians for his courage and ability to talk to people.
He is called the Belarusian Lech Walesa and many people have hopes for change with him. Obviously, they should happen in Belarus in the near future. It's not just these long queues. But also because in almost every city of the country there are pickets," Radina said.
She reminded that the election campaign is taking place in Belarus." These ac
tions are legal, because the election campaign is being conducted in Belarus and it is allowed to collect signatures for presidential candidates. That's why people took advantage of this legal opportunity.
This has never happened before in Belarus. Opposition candidates, of course, participated in pseudo-elections to be able to communicate with voters, but there were no such number of people at those pickets.
Today Belarusians are coming out not just to stand, but to share their outrage. You can see how much they hate Lukashenko, how tired they are of him and how much they
want a speedy change of power," the journalist said.
"The slogan "Stop the cockroach!" became a mega-popular slogan. People go to pickets with sneakers, which symbolize their intention to get rid of Lukashenko sooner. He's been compared to a cockroach, he's so disgusting to people. The logical outcome of his rule in Belarus.
Another popular nickname of Lukashenko is "Sasha three percent." This is due to the fact that independent polls began to be conducted on the Internet and Lukashenko's rating was at the level of 1-3%, no more. The dictator tried to ban Internet polls in a furious way. As a result, the nickname "Sasha three percent" stuck to him dead," Radina said.
She noted that the protest mood in the country was influenced not only by the economic crisis, but also by the epidemic of coronavirus.
"A lot of factors played a role. Tired to live in poverty and fear, to see corruption of officials, arrogance and impunity of Lukashenko himself, who lives on Russian money.
The country has an economic crisis, in all areas a huge number of unemployed, low wages, meager pensions, absurd decrees and laws are introduced, the population is being plundered. Against this background, Lukashenko is building new residences. There are already 18 of them for the whole little Belarus.
He organizes sports competitions, buys "maybahs", planes, builds ice palaces, continues to hold fun tournaments with his own participation. Naturally, this causes rejection in people.
But when the coronavirus epidemic happened, everyone saw that Lukashenko was also a direct threat to human life. He is the only dictator in the world who categorically refused to impose quarantine," the interlocutor stressed.
She stated that official statistics distorted the real picture of morbidity and mortality in the country. In this way, the authorities are trying to hide the true scale of the epidem
ic." It is no longer possible to hide this – we live in the age of information technology. Information is flowing from everywhere that thousands of people are dying, the account of the infected goes to hundreds of thousands. The figures are about 10,000 dead and about a million infected.
Medicine can't handle it. A huge number of health workers were infected. Both nurses and doctors die. There are not enough places in hospitals. We know that even cancer centers have been converted into infectious diseases departments. Accordingly, cancer patients do not receive the necessary assistance and may die prematurely.
The situation is just monstrous. This also served as a trigger that people realized that the struggle for freedom in Belarus today is a stru
ggle for life," the journalist said. Of course, Lukashenko will not gi
ve up so easily, but the Belarusians will not give up. There will be a confrontation. I hope that there will be people in the country, including the authorities and the security forces, who will stop the usurper.
Lukashenko is not a legitimate president. The execution of his criminal orders is a double violation of the law. It is obvious that the situation in Belarus cannot be changed through the elections, so it will ch
ange across the street," Radina concluded. Initially, the Belarusian Central Electoral Commissi
on planned to hold them on August 30. Since May 21, activists have been collecting signatures for their candidates. In order to qualify for the presidential race, the candidate's initiative group must collect more than 100,000 people. Signatures. 14 initiative groups are collecting signatures, including for four
female candidates.29 May Lukashenko said that the Belarusian society is not ripe for vo
ting for a woman: "The president will be a man." On March 1, 2019, he announced that he intended to run for another term.
