MINSK, 16 July (BelTA) – Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko talked to journalists of the Riga Children's Academy of Radio and Television before the opening ceremony of the international festival of arts Slavianski Bazaar in Vitebsk, BelTA has learned.
The young journalists were waiting for the head of state at the Summer Amphitheater as the president was going to open the festival. Aleksandr Lukashenko arrived for the ceremony and was heading to the stage.
"Guys, not now, please. The president is about to take to the stage and give a speech. Let's do it later, please," the president's press secretary Natalya Eismont said upon seeing the academy's film crew.
"Let people do their job, please," Aleksandr Lukashenko responded. Despite the limited time, he readily agreed to talk to the guys and answer their questions.
"Good afternoon! How are our neighbors doing?" the head of state asked.
Nadezhda Bukharova, the head of the group and the founder of the academy, replied: "Well, let's see how we are doing... You are well aware of how things are. We don't know what will happen to us when we come back home," she said.
"Well, stay then," Aleksandr Lukashenko suggested.
"This is what we want. We are already networking," Nadezhda Bukharova replied.
It was the second engagement of the Belarusian president and the students of the academy. The first one took place before the opening of Slavianski Bazaar in 2011. Then it was not only the head of state who answered journalists' questions, but also his son Nikolai who was very young at that time.
The interviewer was a sixteen-year-old student of the academy Ilya Karoza. He asked Aleksandr Lukashenko about his formula for the success as a person and also as a father and grandfather. The young man cited the head of state's words that presidents are not made, they are born.
"Well, let's see... To be born a president is the whole formula for success. I really wasn't kidding when I said that presidents are born. Because this person, a president in the future, must naturally have a certain intuition, a certain feeling that will never let him down. You can't acquire that. You have to be born with it. If you lack this, like some Western politicians do, including, unfortunately, our neighbors, well, then you are no president. Thank God, the presidents in those countries do not have the same constitutional powers as in Belarus. Otherwise, there would have been trouble," the Belarusian leader said.
As for the fulfillment of his family duties, Aleksandr Lukashenko said that he tries to act like everybody else in this regard. "Well, like your parents, your grandfather, your grandmother. They act the same way as I do. Like everybody else. It's just that I have less time for my children and grandchildren. Just like everyone else. The main thing for the president is to be like other people," he said.
