19 March 2024, Tuesday, 17:05
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History Repeated Itself As Farce

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History Repeated Itself As Farce
IRYNA KHALIP

Still, the urge is here to look like Hamlet, not like a clown.

I don’t get it, why everyone appears in such agitation for the fifth day already? Applause and enthusiasm everywhere. They say it’s a breakthrough, a victory, the beginning of the light path, for the first time in 20 years there is an oppositionist in the “chamber”. In general, life is getting better. It’s just – why does everyone have such short memory?

There was opposition in the “chamber” once. I remind: Valer Fralou, Uladzimir Parfianovich, Siarhei Skrabets. No, they were not members of any parties or movements, they were appointed to the “chamber” as reliable and submissive people. The martinet General, the sportsman-businessman and the entrepreneur working with Russia. A picture for everyone to admire. Wonderful, socially close, tried-and-true people.

However, after taking a look around and getting used to the new toys – the “deputy mandates” – the guys started acting flaky. It all started with General Fralou, who obviously thought that the service to the homeland as a deputy-appointee was something different. When Lukashenka came to the “chamber” to talk to its residents, Valer Fralou asked a question which no one had ever asked: “You say, Aliaksandr Ryhoravich, that deputies can get a view of draft bills. Let’s imagine I am sitting on a bench in a park. A beautiful woman walks by. I get a view of her. What’s the point?”

The General finally realized there was zero outcome of their sitting there en masse. An active man gets bored of such life very fast. He becomes fat and stops thinking. So, Fralou, together with Parfianovich and Skrabets created a fraction inside the eternally monolith “chamber” – the “Republic” group. And the great mayhem started.

The participated in protest action. (The newly appointed deputy didn’t come to the protest action on September 12 – and she never will, forget it). In summer 2004, the “republicans” announced a hunger strike of protest. Then it had already become known that Lukashenka was preparing another castration of the Constitution and the referendum on abolishment of the limitation of presidency for two terms in a row. Mikhail Marynich was in prison then. The hunger strikers demanded his release, as well as amendment of the Electoral Code and not to let Lukashenka’s third term happen. Another election to the “chamber” was scheduled on autumn – it was clear they would have to say goodbye to the plum jobs and cozy offices. However, the hunger strikers didn’t think about this. Or they did, and understood everything. They made their choice in the contradiction of good and evil.

Initially, they kept their hunger strike in the working offices. Then – in Fralou’s apartment. The strike lasted for 18 days. The whole world supported the strikers – European Ministers, American Senators. Then they terminated their hunger strike and appointed a big protest action on July 21 (the action, besides, was a success. After it, the “Russia” TV-channel lost accreditation in Belarus for having declared the real number of protesters, not the usual police’s “a hundred and a half drunken hoodlums”). On July 1, General Fralou was brutally beaten at the entrance to his house. Entrepreneur Siarhei Skrabets was soon arrested and convicted, he was released under amnesty in a year and a half. As for Olympic Champion Parvianovich, they caddishly wrested the business away from him and forced him to leave under the threat of imprisonment.

Siarhei Skrabets also couldn’t keep his business and joined Social Democrats. Uladzimir Parfianivich now coaches the national rowing team of Poland (he used to coach Russia). Valer Fraloiu died two years ago, just like Mikhail Marynich, for the sake of whom the General had initiated a hunger strike.

Thus, the opposition in the “chamber” remains an ancient history, not a breakthrough or a victory. However, they were not appointed with an “oppositionist” mark then. Fralou and Parfuianovich just happened to be conscientious people. Already there, in the cozy offices, they realized it was impossible to live like this, that they were participating in some great lie, and tried to change the situation by sacrificing their radiant future – believe me, this is much nobler than to sit in a fluffy chair knowing everything in advance. Starting a hunger strike, coming out to the Square, those bashi-bazouks knew that the peaceful life ended for them, that they had only problems ahead, the scale of which was impossible to predict. Those who call themselves not even deputies, but speakers, claiming that there are no candidates and elections here, and then willingly accept the mandate – they, on the contrary, know that their problems have ended and the peaceful life is starting now. They also know what happens to those who try to disagree in those offices. Only the submissive ones survive.

However, in our case there is no one to warn, and nothing to warn about. The UCP leaders have already declared that the newly appointed deputy will pursue the program “Million Jobs”. Well, it is possible to live in comfort with that for 4 years. Also, I understand why they are so desperate to forget the deputies who had become real opposition inside the “chamber”. It’s just, for the second time, the history repeats itself as a farce. But the urge is here to look like Hamlet, not like a clown.

Iryna Khalip, specially for charter97.org

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