MINSK, 30 October (BelTA) – Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko commented on the rumors that his political career is over as he met with the personnel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, BelTA has learned.
"The president has never run away and is not going to. I have lived long enough," the Belarusian leader stressed.
Aleksandr Lukashenko, in particular, commented on some speculations that his political career was over. "Dream on! That doesn't mean I'm going to clinch to power with fingers, blue with strain, as I once said. No. Politics is not just about the president. Sooner or later we will step down but we're not going to give up on things we have preserved,” he said. “Therefore, if you need me after we step down, we will still serve this state and the people. If the new president, the generals, approach us, want advice and help, support, we will give them that. This is all my politics is about,” he added.
“If someone thinks that I am going to run away… Look, there were situations when someone perhaps was afraid. The generals, who are present here today, have been in close touch with me. They saw that I did not even flinch. Look, we had situations much more difficult than today's. We had cars on fire in the streets. We had anarchists and scums coming here from all over the world in the mid 1990s. We have all the evidence of that. They attempted to storm the House of Government, put up tents in Oktyabrskaya Square. I remember all this. We survived this,” the head of state said.
Comparing the situation then and now, the president said: “The only difference is that external support is huge today. There was such support then, too, but it was smaller in scale to encourage things here. Today they do not stop providing assistance to start a color revolution here. They have set up those Telegram channels. That is why these things are still going on.”
“You should understand that we had a complicated situation: the parliamentary elections, coronavirus, and then the presidential election. It was a very difficult situation in general. As for coronavirus, we adopted a special response strategy which now many in the world share. We did not know about it then. We were criticized from all the sides. We focused on the treatment of people. The president admitted that some aspects of the social and political situation may have been missed in such an environment. “We had to focus on the virus and missed something here. Then I caught this virus right in the middle of the presidential campaign. Of course, we have missed something. This does not justify us, however. Today we have to draw conclusions and learn lessons from the mistakes we made,” the head of state said.
