MINSK, 30 March (BelTA) – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has proved unready for an equal and open dialogue with the Belarusian parliament, Chairman of the Standing Commission on International Affairs of the House of Representatives Andrei Savinykh told journalists, BelTA has learned.
Earlier, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe decided to suspend contacts with the Belarusian authorities.
“Contrary to what it declared PACE has proved to be unready for an open dialogue with the Belarusian parliament. The decision of the Assembly actually disables communication based on the principles of objectivity, openness and balance of approaches and opinions,” Andrei Savinykh said.
According to him, this decision harms, first of all, PACE “where Western European colleagues operate in an atmosphere of one-sided and biased information impact”.
“The Belarusian side was ready to discuss all aspects of the political situation in the spirit of pluralism of opinions and assessments. This was clearly manifested at the meeting of the PACE Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy where a representative of the Belarusian parliament discussed the results of the constitutional reform in Belarus,” Andrei Savinykh noted.
He is convinced that the essence of international inter-parliamentary cooperation is to maintain and promote a professional, appropriate and respectful dialogue. “We believe that today PACE feels uncomfortable when someone comes forward to criticize the Western bloc and the degrading system of Western values and social management models. The Assembly chose to continue the discussion of regional issues in a narrow circle of ‘template thinkers' subject to confrontational logic,” he noted.
According to Andrei Savinykh, such an approach will inevitably lead to delusional interpretations of reality and decisions based on flawed bloc thinking. “Nevertheless, we are sure that the reality will sooner or later force PACE to abandon their ‘groupism' and address real problems, as well as to drop loud, but incompetent and senseless political statements,” he concluded.
