All conditions should be created in Belarus for a civilized dialogue between the government and the public, in particular on the issue of public events, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said.
“There should be ideal order in the country. Some say: “I have been in the streets and I will go there again.” One cannot prohibit a person from taking to the streets. Get involved in this work as this work has been foiled in Minsk, in regional capitals, in big cities. Choose a square in the city to which people can go and express their opinion. The chiefs of the power vertical should be there,” Lukashenko said on March 9 conference on pressing issues of the country’s development as quoted by BelTA state news agency.
“We should learn to conduct a dialogue with the people. We are not against processions, demonstrations. We also conduct them at the state level. Recently we had [them] on Police Day. People should be assigned a place for expressing their opinions like in the developed countries of the West. Let them go there and express their own opinion. And if they call an authority figure there, it means he should be there. And God forbid anyone insult that authority figure. The police should record such insults and take severe measures,” Lukashenko said.
He demanded that strict liability for wrongdoings be guaranteed.
“Stop any attempts. This does not apply to people who want to attract attention and that have found themselves in difficulty. We should pick out provocateurs like raisins from pastry. And they should be held accountable in line with law,” Lukashenko said.
“There will be no Maidan in Belarus,” he said referring to the developments in Kyiv’s Independence Square in 2014.
“There are even no prerequisites for that. But we should always be working on the far approaches to this or that problem,” he said.
