MINSK, 28 January (BelTA) – In his annual Address to Belarusian People and the National Assembly on 28 January Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko analyzed the political platform of the self-exiled opposition, BelTA has learned.
“Let's imagine for a moment what could happen if the self-exiled opposition came to power as a result of the so-called protest vote. Their program provided for restructuring, partial and full privatization of large and medium-sized enterprises, in fact, a manageable sale of farmland and industry flagships under the guise of massive privatization and development of the land market (like in Ukraine). It was decided who would get what and under what conditions. The assets would go to those who finance the opposition today. They suggested joining the future system of liquefied gas supplies from the USA to Eastern Europe. What would it lead to? Look at current spot gas prices and a queue waiting for American tankers. Would there be a place for Belarus in this queue, if there is not enough even for themselves?” Aleksandr Lukashenko asked.
The Belarusian leader stressed that they proposed to ‘optimize' education and healthcare and their employees, to reduce the excessive number of hospital beds. “This would result in the collapse of the entire social sector, a spike in deaths from various diseases. Their plan was to drag Belarus into NATO, to switch to NATO standards, to send Belarusian military to educational institutions and centers of the NATO countries. This would lead to colossal spending on weapons and, ultimately, to missiles on the border with Russia, close to Smolensk. Do you think Russia would be okay with that? Moreover, they wanted to abandon the Russian language, to swear allegiance to the extremist symbols, and demolish monuments. This would result in civil confrontation and rampant nationalism. We had it in the mid-1990s. They started by renaming streets. We stopped those things only when the country elected the first president,” he said.
One of the points was a church schism modeled on the Ukrainian autocephaly. “Obviously, people would not put up with that and we would end up with a conflict. Such a young society as ours simply would not survive such a devastating development of events,” the president stated.
