Mr. Yuri Belenki: “Zianon Pazniak is a real leader”

Radio Liberty, October 18, 2005

The journalist of the Radio Liberty (Belarusan redaction) Mr. Siarhey Navumchyk is interviewing Mr. Yuri Belenki.

Mr. Yuri Belenki is the acting chairman in Belarus of the Belarusan Popular Front “Adradzennie” and the Conservative Christian Party – BPF. 45 years old. Economist. 1990-96 acted as MP in the Supreme Soviet of Belarus of the 12th convocation (the Belarusan Parliament), member of the Opposition of the Belarusan Popular Front, member of the shadow government, responsible for the economical and financial problems, author of any projects of laws on the banks and bank system.

(Navumchyk): Mr. Yuri Belenki, the leader of your party Mr. Zianon Pazniak is in emigration. Do you have contacts with him?

(Belenki): Yes, every day. Mr. Pazniak is the leader of the party. We contact every day. Thanks to God, there are the modern communications like the internet.

(Navumchyk): The Soim of the Conservative Christian Party – BPF has declared that the Party presented Mr. Zianon Pazniak the candidate to the presidency of Belarus. We understand that every political party would like to see its representative in the office of the president. But which arguments do you have besides the interests of your party in order to motivate your collective decision?

(Belenki): It is necessary to present our priorities. Presenting Mr. Zianon Pazniak as candidate of the real Belarusan opposition to the future presidential elections we have based our choice not on the interests of our party but on the interests of the Belarusan state. In the situation when there is a real threat to the Belarusan state and our independence, to the existence of the Belarusan nation – in this situation the party’s interests are not so important. It is more important to preserve the state and the nation. Because of that we have presented Mr. Zianon Pazniak and are working in order to secure the election of Mr. Pazniak President of Belarus.

(Navumchyk): Mr. Yuri Belenki, on the beginning of the 1990s you have acted as the minister of finances in the shadow cabinet headed by Mr. Pazniak. Even the authorities recognized you as a specialist – for example, the prime minister of that time Viachaslau Kebich. Now Anatoly Lebedko is forming the national committee headed by Alexandre Milinkevich. Yesterday Alexandre Dobrovolsky has told on the Radio Liberty that this committee will represent a broad coalition of the specialists. If they would propose you to enter this committee – would you be agree?

(Belenki): No, this is very important that the coalition represented by Lebedko, Dobrovolsky, Milinkevich does not have the interests of the national Belarusan state as a priority. It is very important as well that the chairman of the communist party Siarhey Kalyakin is the chief of the electoral staff of Mr. Milinkevich. Every politician knows that the chief of the staff is a key figure. He is the leader of the communist party. This fact witnesses the real ideology of this coalition and its direction. It is important to mention that the program of the communist party headed by Mr. Siarhey Kalyakin has the following priorities: the liquidation of the Belarusan state and the foundation of the union with Russia. Because of that I cannot and will not participate in this political structure.

(Navumchyk): But the coalition is headed by Lebedko, not Kalyakin…

(Belenki): They represent the same group. It is necessary to remind the political career of Lebedko – who is he. He defended actively the interests of the Komsomol (the Soviet young communist organization) when the Opposition of the Belarusan Popular Front made to the Supreme Soviet (Parliament of Belarus) some propositions directed against the communist party and the Komsomol. Lebedko acted as the young member of the Komsomol’s nomenclature. Then he acted as a member of the Lukashenka‘s group. Lebedko was even the special representative of Lukashenka in the Parliament of Belarus. Now A. Lebedko goes regularly to Russia visiting the so-called “council on the foreign policy and defense”. They elaborate the common policy. This policy is not oriented on the national interests. It is oriented on the defense of the Russian interests. Mr. Lukashenka is making the same policy.

(Navumchyk): In 2001 the supporters of Zianon Pazniak couldn’t collect 100 thousand signatures which were necessary to register him as a candidate to the presidency. But the observers have noticed that your supporters had collected a big number of the signatures. This fact had destroyed the image of your party as an “impotent party” (several mass media had created this image). But are you sure that this time you will collect the necessary number of signatures?

(Belenki): Declarations about “our image” – there are the declarations by the political forces directed from Lubyanka (headquarters of the FSB-KGB). This is not important if these declarations are made officially or not officially. We have collected the necessary number of signatures – 105 thousand signatures. But the regime has said that we didn’t collect this number of signatures and because of that Zianon Pazniak has not been registered the candidate on the presidential elections. But in this situation the regime is guilty – not we. By the way, it is necessary to mention that the central electoral commission did not controlled the signatures of the Hancharyk’s group (his group could have big problems). But Mr. Hancharyk has been registered without any problems.

(Navumchyk): Mr. Yuri Belenki, the Ukrainian agency UNIAN has informed that the leader of the United Civil party Anatoly Lebedko (the chief of the national committee headed by Alexandre Milinkevich) had said in Kiev that “Pazniak is the biggest nationalist in Belarus. There are two politicians of the radical tendency in Belarus – Alexandre Lukashenka and Zianon Pazniak. They have their adherents. But the objects of their activity (declared as the positive objects) are really the destructive objects”. You are an adherent of Mr. Pazniak. Do you agree to comment this declaration?

(Belenki): That’s just the point that you have quoted a speech of the same style and rhetoric elaborated by the communist party at the end of the 1980s and directed against the Belarusan Popular Front – “radical and destructive character”. This was the rhetoric by the ideologists of the Belarusan communist party at the end of the 1980s. Today this rhetoric is used by Mr. Lebedko. What is our radicalism? Is it the fact that we are defending the interests of the Belarusan people? This is not the radicalism. This is the necessity – to defend the independence of Belarus and the democracy. The Belarusan people has to feel itself as the master in its country and not as a foreigner in order to have right to educate the children in Belarusan language, to have the democratic freedoms like in every normal European democratic country. Zianon Pazniak and the political party represented by him are struggling for these objects.
It is necessary to comment the second term – “the destructive tendency”. The destructive tendency signifies the destruction. But even the “Byelorusskaya gazeta” (a newspaper printed in Belarus which represents other political tendencies as Mr. Pazniak) had recognized recently that “Zianon Pazniak was the architect of the independent Belarusan state”. Even the political enemies are recognizing Mr. Pazniak as a creator, moreover as a creator of the most holy thing for every nation – of the independent state. Zianon Pazniak had leaded the activity in order to form the Belarusan Popular Front and the Opposition in the Supreme Soviet (the Parliament) as well as to elaborate the packet of the documents and the laws. You did mention today the Law on the citizenship. The Opposition, the specialists of the Popular Front have elaborated tens of the laws and presented them to the Supreme Soviet. Our state system has been based on these laws.
Thanks to this system we exist today as the Belarusan independent state. Namely the political forces headed by Lukashenka and the forces headed by Lebedko (but there are the same forces) are trying to undermine this base. They are speaking about some “constitutional act”. The regime is forming the illegal Russian military groupings on the territory of Belarus. Namely these forces are undermining the principles, the juridical bases which had been formed by the Belarusan Popular Front and the Opposition headed by Mr. Zianon Pazniak.

Siarhey Navumchyk, Prague

18/10/2005 › English